Stopping the Spread: Using Trusted Data Sources to Prevent Misinformation about COVID-19

The world around us changes rapidly as communities and countries respond to the COVID-19 global pandemic.

CTData realizes that it can be challenging to understand what sources to trust and where to find reliable data. We also realize that our partners are inundated with requests for their time and attention as we navigate balancing work and life in our homes or working on the front lines in the community.

At CTData, our mission is to create accessible and useful products to help communities make data-informed decisions, and we are here to support you through this confusing and challenging time. Here is how our CTData team is working to deliver you reliable and timely content related to COVID-19:

Provide Daily COVID-19 Updates

CTData created a COVID-19 dashboard with daily updates, including the number of completed tests, confirmed cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Detailed information is available at the state and county level with the number of confirmed cases available at the town level. Data in the dashboard comes from the governor’s daily updates with data from the CT Department of Public Health (DPH). You can find additional data related to how COVID-19 is impacting different age groups on DPH’s dashboard.

Disseminate Reliable Resources

Access to reliable and trustworthy resources is essential to increasing data literacy and informing decision making, especially during a global health crisis. Unless you were trained as an epidemiologist, it can be difficult to understand how to read and interpret the information being disseminated. Some questions to ask yourself as you start to explore COVID-19 reports and visualizations include:

• What is the purpose of the report or visualization?

• Who funded and who wrote the deliverable and how might that influence the results?

• What information has been included and what is missing? (e.g. does the data include all tests or only those done at hospitals versus public health clinics)

• How and when was the information collected and reported?

• What outside factors might influence the findings? (ex. increases in testing, executive orders for social distancing)

• Are the numbers absolutes or have they been translated to another metric like a logarithmic scale?

Here are a few resources we have been reading and trust to decipher what’s happening across the world:

General COVID-19 Resources

• World Health Organization COVID-19 webpage

• Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) COVID-19 webpage

• Connecticut’s COVID-19 webpage

• Why outbreaks like coronavirus spread exponentially, and how to “flatten the curve”

• How states are responding to coronavirus, in 7 maps
  
  

Data-Related COVID-19 Resources

• An open letter to Congress for responding to the COVID-19 pandemic with data

• Coronavirus in the US: Latest map and case count

• Where the U.S. stands now on coronavirus testing

• A complete guide to coronavirus charts: Be informed, not terrified

• Mapping coronavirus responsibly

• 17 (or so) responsible live visualizations about the coronavirus, for you to use

• Access and analyze trusted COVID-19 (Coronavirus) global data

• Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) - statistics and research
  
  

We hope that you are all staying safe and healthy as we adjust to this new reality. Please reach out to let us know how we can best serve your COVID-19 or other data-related needs. You can also sign up for our CTData newsletters to get the information you need during this critical time or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.