Scientists launch an app to study the pandemic outbreak

UC San Francisco physician-scientists launched a new initiative, the COVID-19 Citizen Science (CCS) to allow adults in the world to become citizen-scientists, with the aim of better understanding the pandemic outbreak.

US San Francisco researchers launched a tracking app after stating that the spread of the virus has varied across individuals and regions and the factors that determine how it affects individuals are not clear.

A crucial mass of CSS participants is uploading information on the app. This could help researchers gain insight into how the virus is spreading and identify ways to predict and reduce new infections, as Gregory Marcus, a professor in the Department of Medicine at UC San Francisco stated.

The researchers’ hope is for the study to go viral, meaning it will have to enrol more than 1 million individuals around the world. “We want to demonstrate that the number of people signing up for this scientific study and contributing their data can increase exponentially, faster than the disease itself,” Gregory said.

The plan is to create and share a data visualisation that maps enrolment in CSS in real-time, which Gregory hopes will show study participation outpacing the global spread of the virus.

Once enrolled, participants will be asked to complete an initial 10- to 15-minute survey about their health and daily habits. Follow-up questions, delivered by push notification or text message on an ongoing basis, are expected to require five to 15 minutes per week.

In the long term, said Gregory, the collective participation of committed individuals in CCS will help identify behaviours, influences and factors that increase or decrease the risk of infection or that affect outcome after infection. The greater the number of participants, the greater the likelihood of statistically valid findings emerging from the study.

Adapted from: https://www.hcinnovationgroup.com/covid-19/news/21132269/ucsf-app-calls-...
To access the study: https://eureka.app.link/covid19