New map uses Facebook surveys to determine coronavirus locations

By Amy Graff, SFGATE

Released.

5: 21 pm PDT, Monday, April 20,2020

Facebook has actually teamed up with Carnegie Mellon University to collect and track self-reported data from individuals throughout the country experiencing COVID-19 signs.

When correlated with test-confirmed cases, the tool may assist forecast rises in clients and permit public health officials and healthcare providers to better prepare, according to researchers who dealt with the design.

” That’s a lot of the work that the health researchers at Carnegie Mellon have actually been doing to ensure the data that’s coming from the survey is high quality and that it associates with what hospitals are seeing on the ground,” Facebook CEO Zuckerberg explained on ABC’s “Great Morning America” Monday.

Presented through an interactive map launched Monday, the tool offers real-time estimates of the infection’ spread across the United States on a county level. The map will be upgraded everyday and today it showed less than 1%of the population in a lot of counties in the higher Bay Location reporting signs. San Francisco and Santa Cruz were the only counties with a little greater rates with S.F. reporting 1.4%and S.C. 1.55%.

The survey is voluntary and scientists say they’re getting about one million actions weekly from Facebook users and have been balancing another 600,00 0 responses daily through users of the Google Opinion Benefits and AdMob apps, according to a statement from CMU.

The study results are kept confidential: “Facebook doesn’t get, collect or store private survey actions, and CMU doesn’t discover who took the study,” Facebook states on the map website.

Zuckerberg informed ABC the data is currently indicating some breeding grounds for the virus.

” If you look at the maps, there are some things that I believe would jump out to you– for instance, that ski resorts might have been playing in an early role in the spread of COVID,” Zuckerberg stated. “We do see in the maps that some of the counties around where there are popular ski resorts have a lifted level of individuals experiencing signs, so there are things like that you can see.”

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Amy Graff is a digital editor with SFGATE. Email her: [email protected].