A cross-country database of COVID-19 testing

By Joe Hasell, E. Mathieu, Diana Beltekian, B. Macdonald, Charlie Giattino, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Max Roser, H. Ritchie. Scientific Data, 2020

425 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Our understanding of the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic is built upon data concerning confirmed cases and deaths. This data, however, can only be meaningfully interpreted alongside an accurate understanding of the extent of virus testing in different countries. This new database brings together official data on the extent of PCR testing over time for 94 countries. We provide a time series for the daily number of tests performed, or people tested, together with metadata describing data quality and comparability issues needed for the interpretation of the time series. The database is updated regularly through a combination of automated scraping and manual collection and verification, and is entirely replicable, with sources provided for each observation. In providing accessible cross-country data on testing output, it aims to facilitate the incorporation of this crucial information into epidemiological studies, as well as track a key component of countries’ responses to COVID-19. Measurement(s) Test • Extent Technology Type(s) digital curation Factor Type(s) country • temporal interval Sample Characteristic - Organism Coronaviridae Sample Characteristic - Location global Machine-accessible metadata file describing the reported data: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12924755

Subfields: Infectious Diseases, Modeling and Simulation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4e3cb4de018effe879e02c4b44726d8e3b4392d7