We Need Better Covid Data

With vaccines and variants in play, simple headline numbers can’t guide pandemic public policy

- Gagandeep Kang

We are 20 months into a pandemic and the festival season is coming again. With viruses, waves and variants, we have become familiar with tracking headlines numbers, daily tests, daily cases, daily recovered, daily deaths and daily vaccinated.

Despite these easy-to-track data provided at the national level, and different kinds of dashboards and reporting mechanisms at state level, some more useful than others, we have had scientists repeatedly asking the government for more data and the sharing of available data. This appeal has had little response, other than statements about the willingness to share subject to certain conditions, which so far, seem to not have been met by some of the strongest data scientists in India.

Volunteers came together at an early stage to complement and consolidate the many, many disparate sources of government data, but were limited to what was made available in the public domain. This lack of data, and many inconsistencies, limited and confounded much of the analysis and modelling that has been conducted by independent scientists.

We are not today where we were last year. Much has changed, from a world where everyone was susceptible, India now has a serosurvey that reported June-July 2021 data of some states having near 80% seropositivity.

When we have cases and test positivity rates that vary widely across states, do reported numbers and rates mean the same thing in every state? What do the numbers mean today and what do they mean for the future for our ability to have a clear view of the pandemic?