Coronavirus: How can data save lives?
Maybe you don’t know, but 40% of people who tested positive to the new coronavirus in Pernambuco, in the Brazilian Northeast, had difficulty breathing. Among 106 confirmed cases of the disease on that State, 45 had symptoms of dyspnea and respiratory discomfort. And that isn’t a symptom target the old ones. It happened to a 28 years old woman based in the city of Aliança; to a 31 years old woman who live in the Capital Recife and to a 34 years old man from São Lourenço da Mata, a place in the metropolitan area. In fact, more than a third of those who had difficulty breathing had less than 50 years.
This numbers are important because they allow us to prepare ourselves to deal with the rising curve of cases what may overload the Health System, as show a study of the London Imperial College. Because of that, we know we will need more beds and more respirators to use during the pandemia, and understand this resources will be used also for young people; some in the peak of they work capacity. This is how data can save lives.
This numbers, we need to say, wasn’t at any epidemiological bulletin. They wasn’t announced for any medical authority either. But they are available to any citizens since the Local Government launched a dataset with informations about any Covid19 patient on the State. This is a unique movement of transparency in Brazil so far. The structured data do not allow you to identify who is the persons who had the virus. But it allow us to cross data about symptoms, ages, gender, cities and the disease progression. With this information, doctors, biologists, virologists, epidemiologists, data scientists and social scientists can introduce public policies and find ways to reduce the pandemic effects.
This is how we know 20% of coronavirus hospitalised patients in Pernambuco had less than 40 years. Although 90% of people in ICUs had more than 50 years, this doesn’t mean the youngest will not need special treatment. In fact, among the eleven Pernambuco citizens in hospital isolation (it not includes ICUs), ten had symptoms of dyspnea, respiratory discomfort or low oxygen in their blood. The only one without any of those symptoms is a ten years boy. As our resources will become more scarces when the pandemic go further, it is important that more people be able to make this connections and present more solutions. It’s only possible to take medications when we know what is the disease.
Trying to provide a national database about the new coronavirus, the Brasil.IO united a group of 30 volunteers to update and check the disease progression in any city at any state of the country. With this information, UOL says that small cities became the new transmission focus in Brazil. Also using this dataset, the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper showed that half of Brazilian population live in cities where the virus is already. When we started this work, on March 22, Brazil had 1582 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus and 25 deaths of the disease. Today, two weeks later, are 11202 persons who had the virus and 484 deaths.
At this point, another problem beyond the lack of transparency has worry us all: the underreporting. Are not tests enough for a 200 million population. And even the tests that was made faces accumulation to be confirmed or denied. In Pernambuco, 346 peoples are still waiting to know if they have the disease or not. Even worse: twenty of them died without know they had the virus.
The coronavirus is a lethal disease who spread really fast and has serious economics, physiologic and social implications. We can only defeats it with information. Information to the public know how defend themselves. And information to know where the virus had contaminated and how we can react to the disease. Only with data we can beat the pandemic and avoid deaths. This is a threaten we will also have to face.
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