The COVID Tracking Project

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The COVID Tracking Project is a volunteer organization launched from The Atlantic and dedicated to collecting and publishing the data required to understand the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States.

Every day, their teams collect data on COVID-19 testing and patient outcomes from all 50 states, 5 territories, and the District of Columbia. The dataset is currently in use by national and local news organizations across the United States and by research projects and agencies worldwide. Their data API (which allows sites and apps to import our dataset automatically) receives about two million requests per day.

On April 15, they launched the COVID Racial Data Tracker, a partnership between the COVID Tracking Project and the Center for Antiracist Research that collects, publishes, and analyzes racial data on the pandemic within the United States.

Source: The COVID Tracking Project

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    Vaccine Confidence: A Global Analysis Exploring Volatility, Polarization, and Trust

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    This study reports that there is growing evidence of vaccine delays or refusals due to a lack of trust in the importance, safety, or effectiveness of vaccines, alongside persisting access issues. Although immunization coverage is reported administratively across the world, no similarly robust monitoring system exists for vaccine confidence. In this study, vaccine confidence was mapped across 149 countries between 2015 and 2019.

    The study’s findings highlight the importance of regular monitoring to detect emerging trends to prompt interventions to build and sustain vaccine confidence.

    Source: Vaccine Confidence: A Global Analysis Exploring Volatility, Polarization, and Trust

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      Gearing Up for Effective COVID-19 Vaccine Communication

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      This article offers tips to prepare for effective COVID-19 vaccine communication.

      The tips are:

      • Resist the urge to overpromise.
      • Be honest about what we don’t know.
      • Stick to solid ground.
      • Build trust in the process.
      • Go back to basics.

      Source: Gearing Up for Effective COVID-19 Vaccine Communication

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        Talking to Community: Behavioural Change in the Age of COVID-19

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        Response to public health emergencies requires changes in regular behavioural patterns. Encouraging these changes requires coordination and an understanding of the culture and communities affected.

        This article, written by Pramudith D. Rupasinghe, describes experiences with Ebola and COVID-19 wherein behavior change was an integral part of working with communities to prevent infection, care for the sick, and learn about the disease in Sri Lanka and Liberia.

        Source: Talking to Community: Behavioural Change in the Age of COVID-19

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          What is the World Doing about COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance?

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          Even before the COVID-19 crisis, the WHO declared vaccination hesitancy one of the Top 10 threats to global health in 2019.

          A vaccine will help prevent new infections, and more than that, it will help businesses and schools in hard-hit countries get back to normal. Vast amounts of money have been invested in finding a vaccine and media reports update us regularly on the progress of over 200 candidate vaccines under evaluation.This blog shares research on vaccine acceptance worldwide.

          Source: What is the World Doing about COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance?

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            Who to Trust and How to Overcome COVID-19 Misinformation in Nigeria

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            In Nigeria, as in many countries, social media has allowed anyone to post COVID-19 misinformation as truth and fact, while misleading the public and, in some cases, causing real damage.

            This article reviews some of the major misinformation events in Nigeria during the pandemic and notes the steps being taken to correct that situation.

            Source: Who to Trust and How to Overcome COVID-19 Misinformation in Nigeria

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              COVID-19 Health Literacy Project

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              This project creates and translates accessible COVID-19 information into different languages to help all patients know when, and how, to seek care. The materials are created in collaboration with Harvard Health Publishing.

              All of the materials are reviewed and vetted by physicians and medical school faculty members at the Harvard hospitals. These materials are created in collaboration with Harvard Health Publishing. The materials are freely available for download and distribution without copyright restrictions. The project currently supports 35 languages.

              Source: COVID-19 Health Literacy Project

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                COVID-19–Related Infodemic and Its Impact on Public Health: A Global Social Media Analysis

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                The authors of this article followed and examined COVID-19–related rumors, stigma, and conspiracy theories circulating on online platforms, including fact-checking agency websites, Facebook, Twitter, and online newspapers, and their impacts on public health.

                Information was extracted between December 31, 2019 and April 5, 2020, and descriptively analyzed. They performed a content analysis of the news articles to compare and contrast data collected from other sources, and identified 2,311 reports of rumors, stigma, and conspiracy theories in 25 languages from 87 countries. Claims were related to illness, transmission and mortality (24%), control measures (21%), treatment and cure (19%), cause of disease including the origin (15%), violence (1%), and miscellaneous (20%).

                Of the 2,276 reports for which text ratings were available, 1,856 claims were false (82%).

                Misinformation fueled by rumors, stigma, and conspiracy theories can have potentially serious implications on the individual and community if prioritized over evidence-based guidelines. Health agencies must track misinformation associated with the COVID-19 in real time, and engage local communities and government stakeholders to debunk misinformation.

                Source: COVID-19–Related Infodemic and Its Impact on Public Health: A Global Social Media Analysis

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                  Immunizing the Public against Misinformation

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                  Proliferating misinformation — even when the content is, in a best-case scenario, harmless — can have serious and even social and lethal health ramifications in the context of a global pandemic. In some countries, rumours about impending food scarcity prompted people to stockpile supplies early on in the epidemic and caused actual shortages.

                  This article is an interview with Tim Nguyen whose team manages the Information Network for Epidemics (EPI-WIN), which is leading WHO work on managing infodemics.

                  Source: Immunizing the Public against Misinformation

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