Facebook Launches COVID-19 Map That Claims To Be More Accurate

Illustration (Pixabay)

JAKARTA - Facebook continues its efforts to combat the coronavirus or COVID-19 globally. Recently, the social media network launched an interactive map showing accurate data on the spread of the virus.

The interactive map also displays how many people have symptoms of COVID-19, especially in the United States (US). The map uses data from a survey of more than one million Facebook users conducted by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers over two weeks.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook's user base of 2 billion people is positioning it to help researchers conduct a thorough survey to better understand the COVID-19 outbreak.

"Facebook is uniquely suited to run this survey because we serve a global community of billions of people and can perform statistically accurate sampling. We do this in a privacy protection manner that only researchers at CMU say," said the man who is familiarly called Zuck in a statement. official quoted from Tech Crunch, Wednesday 22 April.

Facebook promised to continue to carry out daily surveys to update the data on the map. Not only that, the company will also start conducting surveys globally in the coming weeks.

Zuck said the data collected from Facebook users could help health authorities and local governments decide how and when to reopen the business, education and other sectors in their respective countries.

When using this interactive map, it shows a breakdown of the counties and cities of how many Facebook users surveyed reported symptoms of COVID-19. Users can also compare it with maps of other Facebook users who have reported flu symptoms in the area. This map can also show which regional hospitals are ready to treat patients with positive COVID-19.

Do not stop there, Facebook has also conducted the survey in the UK to track the spread of COVID-19. Facebook said it would not have access to the user's health data but would only pass it on to the CMU.

An expert says the data from the survey will be of use to scientists but may not reveal much about the disease. Facebook launched a survey in the US, on April 6, attracting about one million responses per week.

For information, the survey includes questions about their health and whether they have experienced common symptoms of COVID-19, such as persistent cough or fever.

CMU analysts plan in a few weeks to use data from surveys and other sources to estimate how many hospital admissions and intensive care COVID-19 will be in specific areas.