Epidemiologists from the University of California and Stanford University have asked for more detailed data on the state’s COVID-19 cases to help officials develop more effective tactics to combat the rise in cases. However, their requests have not been met due to workload constraints as well as privacy concerns, according to the report.
The data epidemiologists are requesting is reported to HHS through their federal contractors Palantir and TeleTracking, which are aggregating information from more than 225 datasets with demographic information and community-based testing. The HHS COVID-19 data is not publicly reported, but the agency says public health officials will have access to the data.
Some clinics are turning to their own data for research, including Roots Community Health Center in Oakland, Calif. The clinic pinpointed some outbreaks and developed targeted education and outreach for those areas and settings.
Roots Community Health Center CEO Noha Aboelata, MD, said the granular data could provide neighborhood-level information that is important to stemming the spread. “Withholding the information is going to lead to deaths,” she told Science.
The article cited New York City as a success story. The city’s health department publicly reported COVID-19 datasets on its website including information for all 177 neighborhoods, and health systems used that data to map out “hot spots” and prepare for the next areas that would likely be hardest hit. The datasets also included information by age, race and ethnicity.
“Had it not been for that data analysis we would have been much slower in the response, and … many more lives would have been lost,” Oxiris Barbot, New York City health commissioner, told Science.
More articles on data analytics:
‘No one is taking access or data away from CDC’: CDC director, HHS CIO explain COVID-19 data transfer decision
University of California Health unified dataset to speed up COVID-19 research: 4 details
‘A really expensive WebMD’: Utah’s $6M contact tracing app falls short of expectations
