Facebook offers COVID-19 self-reporting survey for epidemiologists’ research

Facebook is offering a new way to help health organizations in the fight against the coronavirus outbreak. Now, VentureBeat reports about a new survey that Facebook’s users will be able to fill out and therefore provide info about the virus spread, as part of a research program done by Carnegie Mellon University.

The survey option will be available for American users as a link in the top section of the News Feed page. Researchers will be able to identify places in need for medical resources as well as create maps with self-reported coronavirus infections. Facebook stated that if the approach is successful, the method can be used in other countries as well.

Additionally, Facebook stated that Carnegie Mellon researchers will not share responses to the survey with Facebook and Facebook will not share information with the researchers too.

To further help organizations fight the pandemic, Facebook provides aggregated data to epidemiologists via its Disease Prevention Maps. Based on the data, researchers can offer information on people’s mobility in different areas to local authorities.