Data access key to combat coronavirus

The allocation of resources to fight coronavirus without co-ordinated information is simply guesswork. Speedy and precise data analysis will save countless lives.

A patient receives a shot in the first-stage safety study clinical trial of a potential vaccine for COVID-19 on Monday at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle. Picture: AP

At some stage we will have a vaccine against the coronavirus. For now, however, stopping the virus is a numbers game. It’s a geospatial challenge. It really is a matter of acquiring and using data. Speedy and precise data analysis will save countless lives.

Data helps us to allocate limited resources in the most efficient way. Allocation without data is guesswork. Good geospatial data can help slow the spread of the virus.

The function of data is to answer questions and we have plenty of those. How many people have been infected? Where have they picked up the infection? Who have they been in contact with? Where have they been since they contracted the virus? How are different age cohorts impacted? If we can answer these questions, we can use our limited resources to test the most likely cohort and quickly identify the infected people in Australia. We can then remove the infected people from public life by isolating them for a few weeks and significantly slow down the rate at which corona spreads. With the right data at hand, we also know in which key geographies restrictions must be tightened more than elsewhere.

The problem is that we don’t have access to overly impressive data. In fact, it’s quite concerning how little relevant data is publicly available.

Sure, we see daily updates on total detected cases and the total death count at a country level. In Australia we get to see the case and death toll presented on a state level. But that’s about it.

Data is collected on a state level but doesn’t appear to be collated to a decent central data source. NSW is probably providing the best data of all the states. We learn about the age profile and gender split of cases in NSW and we receive at least superficial information on the source of infection (contact to confirmed case, acquired overseas, etc).

So, that’s a start.

More detailed case and travel histories would be great. It’s concerning that the most basic demographic data relating to infected cases isn’t available for all Australian cases. Coronavirus is a global pandemic and needs global collaboration on all fronts. Data collection and sharing is one of those fronts.

We must create a single central and publicly accessible Australian corona database and make it available right now. The Australian Bureau of Statistics is the obvious middleman to co-ordinate all such local health data (appropriately anonymised for publication). All countries must collect such data and feed it into the World Health Organisation.

The more detailed the datasets, the better scientists are able to understand the demographic lines along which the virus travels. We need to understand who is infected and therefore who is spreading the disease. We know that in Italy and South Korea, for example, different age cohorts with different geospatial patterns spread the virus. In South Korea churchgoers in their 20s were the main spreaders, while in Italy people aged older than 70 are more likely to be infected. To a degree this might just be a testing issue, but it speaks to the importance of understanding local behavioural patterns.

We are facing the challenge of educating 25 million Australians (and the remaining seven billion people on our planet) about a serious and novel problem in record time. Harder yet is the task of changing the behavioural patterns of billions of people.

Practising social distancing, voluntary self-isolation, limiting your purchases at the supermarket, working from home, sticking to a vigilant hand-hygiene routine — the list of social practices that are being learnt by the public is long.

Data alone won’t ensure that we all successfully learn these new behaviours, but data provides the opportunity to learn how we must behave lest we contract the virus ourselves.

For data to be an effective tool for education (and re-education), and ultimately for behavioural change, it must be publicly available. We must cut red tape to allow the centralised collection and dissemination of data.

The scientific community has the skills and capacity to use data for good. Let’s ensure that we ­establish access and provide data fast because our lives, and the lives of our loved ones, literally depends on it.

Simon Kuestenmacher is director of research at The Demographics Group.