CMU to launch website tracking covid-19 activity based on Google, Facebook surveys

Carnegie Mellon University is launching a website this week that uses data from Facebook and Google surveys to try to pinpoint covid-19 activity nationwide.

Data from the Facebook surveys alone, broken down to a county level, show that Beaver County has the highest percentage of residents with covid-19 symptoms, compared to other Southwestern Pennsylvania counties with 0.91%.

Westmoreland County had the lowest percentage in the region at 0.43%, according to that data.

“I’m very happy with both the Facebook and Google survey results. They both have exceeded my expectations,” Ryan Tibshirani, co-leader of Carnegie Mellon’s Delphi research group, said in a statement.

Tibshirani said the survey responses, combined with other data such as medical claims and medical testing, will help researchers generate estimates of coronavirus activity that are more reflective of reality than what is now available from positive coronavirus tests alone.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a Pittsburgh-based infectious disease and critical care physician, said the information could be beneficial.

“I do think crowdsourcing information on the coronavirus outbreak is promising and could be useful,” Adalja said.

“It will be important to test this data against laboratory-confirmed cases and see how well it tracks,” Adalja added. “However, as right now most respiratory illness is likely caused by the coronavirus, the symptom tracking may be pretty accurate.”

Adalja said it “will not be easy to distinguish the signal” when influenza and other respiratory viruses are circulating.

Carnegie Mellon’s website will have interactive heat maps of the United States displaying the survey estimates from Facebook and Google users down to a county level. It is expected to go live later this week. The heat maps will include data provided by other partners, including Quidel Corp. and a national health care provider, the university said.

Carnegie Mellon has been receiving about a million responses a week from Facebook users. The university said nearly 600,000 users of Google’s Opinion Rewards and AdMob applications were answering another Carnegie Mellon survey each day.

Facebook shared information from its aggregated surveys, which in addition to covid-19 shows how many people nationwide are experiencing regular flu symptoms.

Here is a breakdown of self-reported covid-19 symptoms by Southwestern Pennsylvania county, according to the Facebook data:

• Armstrong County: 0.81%

• Allegheny County: 0.68%

• Beaver County: 0.91%

• Butler County: 0.63%

• Fayette County: 0.9%.

• Washington County: 0.63%

• Westmoreland County: 0.43%