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Facebook Data Help Track COVID-19 Spread

Tina Trinh

   NEW YORK - Facebook likely knows a lot about you already. So would you
   fill out a survey on the social media site about how you are feeling
   today?

   What if that information could help researchers and officials navigate
   the current pandemic? If it meant local businesses, parks and beaches
   might reopen sooner rather than later, would that make a difference?

   That's the idea behind several efforts to tap into people's social
   media and internet use to find hot spots and forecast outbreaks of the
   virus well before hospitals are inundated.

   As society begins to open up after months-long closures, government
   officials are looking for leading indicators -- data that may forecast
   that an outbreak is coming -- to help them make key decisions about
   what to open and when.

   One indicator is through a symptom survey created by Carnegie Mellon
   University researchers. The survey appears at the top of a person's
   Facebook newsfeed and asks whether he or she has experienced COVID-19
   symptoms including fever, cough and shortness of breath.

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