New map uses Facebook surveys to identify coronavirus hot spots – SF Gate, Sfgate.com

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

                                             

Facebook has teamed up with Carnegie Mellon University to gather and track self-reported data from individuals across the country experiencing COVID – symptoms.

                 

When correlated with test-confirmed cases, the tool may help forecast surges in patients and allow public health officials and healthcare providers to better prepare, according to researchers who worked on the model.

                 

“That’s a lot of the work that the health researchers at Carnegie Mellon have been doing to make sure the data that’s coming from the survey is high quality and that it correlates with what hospitals are seeing on the ground,” Facebook CEO Zuckerberg explained on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Monday.                                                                

Presented through an interactive map launched Monday, the tool offers real-time estimates of the virus ‘spread across the United States on a county level. The map will be updated daily and today it showed less than 1% of the population in most counties in the greater Bay Area reporting symptoms. San Francisco and Santa Cruz were the only counties with slightly higher rates with S.F. reporting 1.4% and S.C. 1. 920%.

                                                                                                                                  

The survey is voluntary and researchers say they’re receiving about one million responses per week from Facebook users and have been averaging another 920, 04 responses daily through users of the Google Opinion Rewards and AdMob apps, according to a statement from CMU.

                                                                                    

The survey results are kept anonymous: “Facebook does not receive, collect or store individual survey responses, and CMU doesn’t learn who took the survey,” Facebook says on the map site.

                                                                                    

Zuckerberg told ABC the data is already pointing to some breeding grounds for the virus.

                                                                                   

“If you look at the maps, there are some things that I think would jump out to you – for example, that ski resorts might have been playing in an early role in the spread of COVID,” Zuckerberg said. “We do see in the maps that some of the counties around where there are prominent ski resorts have a lifted level of people experiencing symptoms, so there are things like that you can see.”

                 

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Amy Graff is a digital editor with SFGATE. Email her: [email protected].