New tracker aims to identify, collect data on COVID-19 cases across Europe
According to the World Health Organization, a third wave of COVID infections is now all but inevitable in Europe. A COVID tracker developed by IIASA researcher Asjad Naqvi, aims to identify, collect, and collate various official regional datasets for European countries, while also combining and homogenizing the data to help researchers and policymakers explore how the virus spreads.
While many comparisons have been made between the COVID-19 pandemic and similar events in history, one thing sets this pandemic apart from others: the unprecedented amount of knowledge and data that is constantly being generated to understand how the pandemic is unfolding. For a high-income region like Europe, the quality of information made available on a daily basis is exceptionally high compared to the rest of the world. Using this information to make comparisons between different European countries is however not a simple tas
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How do you fight misinformation around neglected tropical diseases? In this competition, teams of college students across the globe had 24 hours to cook up a cool plan.
How do you fight misinformation around neglected tropical diseases? In this competition, teams of college students across the globe had 24 hours to cook up a cool plan.
Those are some of the rumors that revolve around the treatments for life-threatening diseases.
Now imagine you have 24 hours to come up with a plan to discourage people from believing the rumors and encourage them to seek treatment.
That was the challenge at this spring’s Hackathon, an international competition hosted by the Task Force for Global Health’s Neglected Tropical Diseases Support Center. While the competition sounds very COVID-relevant, in this case, the event challenged participants to dispel misinformation surrounding diseases like leprosy, Dengue fever and schistosomiasis.
“Rumors and misinformation are threats to progress [against diseases] and are not a laughing matter. They cost lives,” says Moses Katabarwa, a competition judge who works at the Carter Center’s Uganda River Blindness program and has seen how misinformation prevents patients from taking life-saving treatments. “Well-proven ideas can be threatened unless we tackle [rumors] intelligently a