To Fight Pandemics, We Need Better Data

We still don't know how many people have the virus, how many are hospitalized, how many are in intensive care units, and how many are on ventilators. There is poor data on testing availability, and testing results are too often incorrect, delayed, or not counted. Contact tracing, necessary for avoiding community spread of coronavirus, lacks both the needed data and the human or technological resources to use it. And for much of the pandemic, we have not known whether medical supplies were adequate, whether equipment was even working, or how quickly we could obtain crucial items such as personal protective equipment and ventilators or ramp up to produce them domestically. Here, Davenport et al discuss how to address the data management issues.