An international team of researchers, including Carlos Baquero (INESC TEC and UMinho) and Raquel Menezes (UMinho), is measuring the real impact of COVID-19 in 150 countries, through research carried out on social media.
Everyone can access the survey of the “Measuring the Iceberg” study, available online, in 60 different languages.
During the initial stage, the respondents were asked to complete a survey with three questions: from which geographical area can you provide data, how many people do you know in the area and how many people in that area do you know who have COVID-19 symptoms or who may have had contact with the disease? The newest version of the survey includes a question about recent cases, in order to identify possible outbreaks.
In order to facilitate people’s participation, the project developed a mobile app, thus promoting the citizen’s involvement. The app is currently available for Android and iOS.
According to the answers obtained, the data are processed and managed to eliminate outliers, using statistical techniques. Then, they are compared with estimates representing the number of cases according to the evolution of the mortality ratio (via official data), and their relation with the mortality ration of cases identified in Wuhan (around 1.4%). This process is crucial to ensure the data accuracy. The method’s simplicity and correlation with the amount of cases resulting from serology studies (with similar percentages in Spain) are two of its main advantages. It is important to mention that the research carried out within the scope of the CoronaSurveys project is completely anonymous, and the participants and patients are not required to provide personal information that others could use to identify them.
The project has recently provided estimates of the number of active cases in the transmission phase, also identifying the expected proportion of undetected cases (based on the mortality ratios), and a world map that displays the current risks of contagion, according to said estimates.
In addition to the real-time processing of data, CoronaSurveys – for the most part, a research project – has a significant scientific potential.
Entities
- Coordinator: IMDEA Networks, Madrid, Spain
- Portuguese Institutions: Universidade do Minho and INESC TEC
- Other institutions: University of Washington, USA; U. Kaiserslautern, Germany; University of Trento, Italy; QMUL, UK; Inria Rennes, France; TU Darmstadt, Germany; Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Greece; U. Cyprus, Cyprus; USC, USA; Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Ukraine; EvoLogics, Germany; UC3M, Spain; MIT, USA; Algolysis Ltd, Cyprus; U. Edinburgh, UK; Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan; U. Concepción, Chile; Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
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