The entire world is in the middle of the pandemic, and we are currently facing a global crisis. The decision made by the government and leaders to overcome this pandemic will shape the world in the upcoming years. To fight against this epidemic, officials are taking various actions from a public health care perception. The government from every country is taking precautionary measures and spreading awareness. The main target is to detect the infection constellation and earmark scarce resources by limiting the public movements. These preventive measures taken by officials will determine how many lives are possible to save in the upcoming months. Here’s everything you need to know about how big data helps countries against coronavirus.
In this time of the pandemic, modern technology is playing a vital role in the battle against coronavirus. The tracking of the spread of this virus is not possible, nor do the prediction can be made in real-time. The development of the coronavirus vaccine will officially take up to 18 months. It seems agonizingly slow, so the only weapon we have right now is modern technology and social technology. Therefore, the only hope we have for now is big data. Big data is helping many countries in the fight against this invisible coronavirus.
How this coronavirus pandemic started?
The World Health Organization office in China reported the first case of an unknown pneumonia-causing virus in the city of Wuhan on 13th December 2019, which later identified as coronavirus, also known as COVID-19. The epidemic originated from one of the Wuhan seafood markets. This market carries illegal trading of various wild animals, including bats, marmots, snakes, etc. Coronavirus is an animal virus, which can also affect humans. So it’s thought that first people infected from this
However, the animal host for this coronavirus is still unknown. The epidemic started from Wuhan, China, later declared as a global pandemic. It has now spread to over 213 countries all over the world. It has infected about 2,074,529 people, and about 139,378 confirmed deaths cases reported till 17th April 2020. Still, the numbers are continuously growing each day.
Before explaining how big data helps countries against coronavirus, let’s take a quick review of what big data is. So big data refers to the diverse and bulky sets of information that keep on growing at increasing rates every minute. It comprises of the extensive volume information, the variety of the data point storage, and the velocity at which it accumulates—big data derived from many sources in numerous formats.
What is big data technology?
The big data is so vast that the traditional data processing units can’t process it. Therefore, the development of big data technology took place. It is a software utility that is designed explicitly to analyses, process, and abstract the big data sets of an extraordinarily complex and large volume of information. The big data technology helps to conclude and predict future risk by dealing with the vast amount of real-time data.
How is big data collected?
Big data collection occurs in the following way:
- Public comments on social media networks.
- Publically shared comments on websites.
- Voluntarily shared data from apps and electronics through questionnaires
- Product purchases
- Electronic check-ins
The bid data gathered by the sensors and other inputs in the electronic devices.
How Big Data Helps Countries against Coronavirus?
The world has faced some deadly pandemic outbreaks, such as the SARS epidemic in 2003 and Spanish Flu in 1918. The one advantage we have today that we didn’t have at that time is the high level of technology. Many countries are using big data, machine learning, and other digital tools to track down and control the coronavirus outbreak.
The coronavirus epidemic continues to spread across the world, and the number of cases is increasing by each day. The best possible way for officials to control this outbreak is to use digital technology. Big data technology is now helping different countries to progress real-time estimates and forecast the impact of coronavirus outgrowth. It also handles to arm healthcare professionals, so they remain prepared to deal with estimated growing patients.
Here’s how big data helps countries against coronavirus fight:
- Monitoring population movements
Many countries are using mobile data, aggregated information to monitor the population movements. West Africa used the same telecom data technique during the Ebola epidemic. Flow minder, UNICEF Innovation lab, and others then continued to further research on this technology.
During this coronavirus pandemic, many countries are implementing this digital technology to control the outbreak. Such as in Belgium, Dalberg Data Insight organization is doing this task. This organization is authorized by the Belgium government to lead the big data in the fight against COVAID-19. Now the aggregated telecom data from the three telecom operator companies in the country have been analyzed by this organization. The main goal is to monitor human mobility concerning lockdown as well as to subordinate the risk of epidemic in specific regions. With the help of this technology, there has been an average of 54% decrease in human mobility across different regions in Belgium.
South Korea is also using big data to restrict the mobility of the population. The Ministry of Interior and Safety has developed a mobile app to watch its quarantined citizens. The people can communicate with government coronavirus case officers to report their symptoms by using this app. Both get notified if the person leaves its designated quarantined area. This technology has contributed to a major role in decreasing the rate of coronavirus cases across the country.
- Surveillance infrastructure to locate exposed people
The best example is China, which is successfully using its surveillance infrastructure in response to coronavirus outbreak. China’s government installed thermal scanners in train stations all over the country to detect body temperature in people. On the detection of elevated body temperature, the person gets detained for coronavirus testing by health officials. If that person is tested positive, other passengers are informed about quarantining themselves. This technology is successfully adopting due to the country’s strict transportation rules. According to which passengers are allowed to use public transport with their ID cards issued by the government.
Moreover, in addition to using mobile data, China’s authorities have installed millions of security cameras across the streets to track down citizen’s mobility. The security cameras are helping officials to discern people who are not following quarantine instructions. Authorities get called if a person to stay in quarantine, but security cameras discover them outside. Likewise, big data helps countries against coronavirus fight.
- Identification of communities at risk
The government needs to identify the communities which are more exposed to the coronavirus outbreak. So they can deal with preventive measures, emergency funding allocation, and health facilities improvements. Especially in those countries which are already dealing with poverty issues. Like how are people supposed to wash their hands for 20 seconds if the water they use comes from the polluted river? Or how can they quarantine themselves if the entire family is living in a single room? How can people stay at home when they are working on daily wages.
So the countries dealing with such problems are using big data to map areas where the communities are at high risk of exposure. The authorities are doing so by combining the available primary data with satellite images and information from the national bureaus of statistics.
For example, in Kenya, LOCAN, the Location Analytics team at Dalberg research is currently busy analyzing high-risk areas in different African countries. The obtained results are then modified to epidemiological models, so the decision on the crisis control will be sanction.
Similarly, Nigeria also developed a similar risk model. It consists of three key factors. First, the people above 60 years age, secondly regular smokers and third people who use unprocessed fuel in their houses.
- Contact tracing through a mobile app
During this time of the pandemic, the bioethics experts and medical researchers in America and Europe are using the power of big data. They are using a mobile app to track the contact tracing to lower the epidemic rate. The big data Institute of Oxford University is working with government authorities to elucidate the benefits of mobile app for coronavirus contact tracing. It has estimated that half of the COVAID-19 transmission happens before symptoms arise. A mobile app technology can speed up awareness by alerting people who got exposed to this epidemic.
The government in China also introduced a close contact detector app. This app sends alerts to users if they get into contact with an affected person. This app has helped China to fight against coronavirus successfully. Big data helps countries against coronavirus by the development of contact tracing apps.
Various tech innovating companies are already working on developing apps to monitor and track down the exposed people. In the USA, the government is constantly in contact with the giant companies to determine every possible app development option for tracking down the infected people.
- Official dashboards for outbreak analysis
Another big data tool that is helping in the fight against the coronavirus outbreak is dashboards from authorities, such as the World Health Organization. These dashboards provide data about the progression and invasiveness of infection. It also states real-time statistics and data about the confirmed infected and death cases based on different locations from all over the world. Government officials and healthcare professionals are using this big data tool in the prediction of coronavirus hotspot. This data is also helpful for official policymakers for implementing lockdown orders.
The outbreak analytics require all available data on coronavirus pandemic. It includes the numbers of deaths, confirmed cases, tracing interactions of
Conclusion
Big data technology is playing a vital role in the fight against coronavirus. With the help of this technology, many countries modeling efforts to predict the flow of coronavirus pandemic. Moreover, machine learning, big data, and modern technology are helping frontline figures and officials in effectively analyzation of data. So they can develop better strategies in response to the pandemic.
If you have any information regarding how big data helps countries against coronavirus, do comment and let us know.
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