COVID-19
Publication Date/Time
2020-03-18T08:00:00+00:00
Country
Global
An overview of COVID-19 and the available open datasets on the
European Data Portal and beyond
CORONAVIRUS AND COVID-19

Coronaviruses [https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus] are a
specific subset of virus with a unique set of characteristics.
COVID-19
[https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019] is
the name caused by a specific strain of the coronavirus and is the
seventh identified coronavirus.

It was first reported in December 2019 in Wuhan City, China. Since the
first diagnosed case in China, COVID-19 has rapidly spread across the
world. As of 16 March 2020, there have been COVID-19 cases detected in
more than 140 countries in Asia, Australia, Europe, Africa, North
America and South America. At this date, Europe is now the epicentre
of COVID-19 with the largest number of confirmed cases in Italy. In
most western countries, case numbers have been increasing by about 33%
per day
[https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441].

This virus, like the other coronaviruses, targets people’s
respiratory system. Symptoms of COVID-19 range from mild symptoms, to
severe illness, and potentially death. These symptoms include a fever,
cough, and shortness of breath that may appear between 2 to 14 days
after exposure. Due to its range of symptoms and severity, it has been
hard to track the virus.

OPEN DATA AND COVID-19

Since awareness on COVID-19 began growing across the world, more
health datasets have been published as open for (re-)users to utilise
in creating platforms and interactive maps, for example, to support
citizens in taking steps to stay healthy, like avoiding risk areas.
Examples can be seen in national open data portals and the health
ministries across Europe. The picture below shows the Dutch Ministry
for Health, Wellbeing and Sport’s (RIVM) interactive map of COVID-19
cases [https://www.rivm.nl/coronavirus-kaart-van-nederland]. The
download icon in the bottom right corner also allows the user to
download the image, or the raw data behind it.
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/2020-03-18_aantal.png]
_Figure 1: COVID-19 mapped in the Netherlands by RIVM_

To new readers, the European Data Portal (EDP) acts as a single access
to point to open data that is published by national open data portals
and institutions in EU Member States and additional countries. At the
moment of writing, there are 64 datasets on EDP
[/data/datasets?locale=en&query=%22covid%22%20OR%20%22corona%22&page=1]
that reference “covid” or “corona”, and very likely many
others are relevant to researchers to understand the current situation
better, such as datasets describing health infections
[/data/datasets?locale=en&query=infection&page=1&categories=heal],
epidemics [/data/datasets?locale=en&query=epidemic&page=1] or
pandemics [/data/datasets?locale=en&query=pandemic&page=1]. This can
be seen in the image below.
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/2020-03-18_datasets.png]
_Figure 2: Open datasets on COVID-19 in Europe_

Examples of these datasets are:

 	* “Key figures concerning the COVID-19 epidemic in France
[/data/datasets/chiffres-cles-concernant-lepidemie-de-covid19-en-france?locale=en]”
published by the French national open data portal (data.gouv.fr
[https://www.data.gouv.fr/fr/]).
 	* “Confirmed cases of COVID-19 infection by region
[/data/datasets/cas-confirmes-dinfection-au-covid-19-par-region?locale=en]”
published by the French national open data portal (data.gouv.fr).
 	* “COVID-19 Coronavirus data
[/data/datasets/covid-19-coronavirus-data?locale=en]” – a dataset
that provides surveillance and disease data for COVID-19 Coronavirus
worldwide published by the European Union Open Data Portal
(data.europa.eu [https://data.europa.eu/euodp/en/home]).

In addition, a very relevant example of emergency-driven open data
publishing are the efforts of the Italian “Dipartimento per la
Protezione Civile” (Agency for the Protection of Civilians). The
agency has shared all of their COVID-19 data on GitHub
[https://github.com/pcm-dpc/COVID-19], including national trends,
provinces data, regions data, summary cards, and areas. These datasets
are already available for adding APIs and English translations.

This publication demonstrates – indirectly – the importance of
data not only to be _available_, but also _discoverable_. Without
taking anything off the merit of such a valuable initiative, it was
likely published in a rush to support the emergency and, at the moment
of writing, the dataset unfortunately cannot be found on the Italian
national data portal
[https://www.dati.gov.it/search/type/dataset?query=covid] and – as a
consequence – is not listed on the EDP either, as we depend on
publication on the national portals. The GitHub repository also cannot
be found on mainstream web search engines such as Google. Thus, some
steps still need to be taken to aid the discoverability of datasets.

Finally, it is important to highlight that not everybody is qualified
to correctly interpret such specialistic data. In the past, the term
“armchair auditor” has been used in a derogatory way to point at
the risk of open data being unwittingly used to run analysis or draw
conclusions on phenomena that go beyond the skills of the researcher.
This is the case for COVID-19. As much as the work of EDP and of the
other data teams in civil service will keep empowering you, please do
not discard expert advice and the mainstream official news channels
for information on the medical emergency.

The EDP team takes the opportunity to invite our followers to be safe
and to follow recommended safety guidelines
[https://twitter.com/EU_Commission/status/1239916385855320066?s=20].

For more open datasets on COVID-19, explore the European Data
Portal’s datasets [/data/datasets?locale=en] and the European Union
Open Data Portal’s datasets [https://data.europa.eu/euodp/en/data/].

 

For more information or examples on COVID-19, explore the EDP’s news
archive and feature highlights section [/en/news-events/news]. Aware
of more open data examples around the virus? Share them with us via
mail [/en/feedback/form?type=4] and follow us on Twitter
[https://twitter.com/EU_DataPortal], Facebook
[http://www.facebook.com/EuropeanDataPortal] or LinkedIn
[https://www.linkedin.com/company/european-data-portal/] to stay up to
date!
