Facebook starts prompting US users to fill out a COVID-19 survey to help track the virus

Facebook announced to start survey for its US users so as to examine and look over for their health in this critical phase of pandemic. The company took this decision as influenced by Carnegie Mellon University research project. The project aims at generating “heat maps” of self-reported coronavirus infections. If this survey goes well, it would be implemented in other countries too.

Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university situated at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. CMU students, faculty and staff are shaping the future with a strong focus on finding practical answers to complex problems regarding from computing to the arts to the environment to biotechnology.

A link at top of user’s news feeds will be displayed which will direct the user to the survey. This survey will ultimately help them to the know the fact — whether they need medical resources or not. Last month, Google came up with a similar provision called as — Opinion Rewards app. Also, facebook assured it’s users that no data about the individual and the researchers will be shared among themselves and facebook too will not have any access to these personal information.

Facebook also mentioned to start Disease Prevention Maps program in order provide location data to epidemiologists in 40 countries working on the survey. This will help researchers to provide updates, on how people are moving in different areas, to authorities and officials in that respective region.

Again, in addition to location data, the company will setup a “Social Connectedness Index“. It will be very much helpful in order to find out which area are more affected by coronavirus and are in a need to get support. Co-location maps feature can be used to know the probability of how many people in one area come with people in another area.