{"id":174493,"date":"2022-03-15T20:54:14","date_gmt":"2022-03-15T15:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=174493"},"modified":"2022-03-15T20:54:14","modified_gmt":"2022-03-15T15:24:14","slug":"data-lessons-from-two-years-of-the-covid-19-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/data-lessons-from-two-years-of-the-covid-19-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Data lessons from two years of the covid-19 pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Context<\/strong>: After declaration of the covid as a global pandemic by WHO, various countries set up web-based dashboards for providing covid related data and information to their citizens. However, it was not set-up in India.<\/p>\n

India did not set up any web-based data portal. The Union Ministry of Health used to provide daily infection and death numbers state-wise. Apart from the central government also built Aarogya Setu app to track citizens\u2019 movement data<\/strong> during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Volunteer-driven initiative: <\/strong>Due to lack of any government initiative, the covid portal, Covid19india.org was set up.<\/p>\n

What problems India faced due to lack of authentic data?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Flawed covid data was used to reinforce the message that everything is fine. For example, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare could provide neither back data for previous days nor a tool to examine trends at a more granular level. The ministry struggled to maintain a regular schedule even for putting out these bare details.<\/p>\n

Aarogya Setu proved to be of limited utility, and it only aroused the suspicion of a wary citizenry.<\/p>\n

It led to loss of time <\/strong>and energy<\/strong>. It means due to lack of data, much of the \u2018covid management\u2019 protocol was diverted for imposing stringent conditions for recording covid deaths. For example, State governments set up audit committees to certify covid deaths.<\/p>\n

Poor data result in poor program formulation <\/strong>and implementation<\/strong>. For example, India\u2019s poor covid data resulted in the poor progress<\/strong> in ramping up health infrastructure. It also slowed down the pace of the vaccination programme till the second wave hit us in the spring of 2021?<\/p>\n

What are the suggestions to improve India\u2019s data governance?<\/strong><\/p>\n

First pandemic data lesson: \u201c<\/strong>An Open data ecosystem<\/strong> can be literally life-saving\u201d. For example, A geo-tagged database<\/strong> can help epidemiologists to better predict the evolution of the epidemic.<\/p>\n

Second pandemic data lesson: <\/strong>When data quality is poor, uncritical use of data in policymaking is fraught with dangers. Therefore, a better quality of data should be generated which is beneficial for policy making<\/p>\n

A well-regulated data ecosystem<\/strong> can be built. It can help reap the benefits during a crisis. For instance, the UK\u2019s statistics watchdog, the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR<\/strong>), worked to keep the data honest. \u00a0An independent and credible watchdog can check the distortion of honest data.<\/p>\n

An empowered statistical regulator <\/strong>is the need of an hour in a healthy democracy. <\/strong>He should be answerable to its citizens and Parliament rather than the ruling regime.<\/p>\n

Source: <\/strong>The post is based on an article \u201cData lessons from two years of the covid-19 pandemic<\/strong>\u201d published in the live mint on 14th<\/sup> March 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Context: After declaration of the covid as a global pandemic by WHO, various countries set up web-based dashboards for providing covid related data and information to their citizens. However, it was not set-up in India. India did not set up any web-based data portal. The Union Ministry of Health used to provide daily infection and… Continue reading Data lessons from two years of the covid-19 pandemic<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10320,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[212,10501],"class_list":["post-174493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-gs-paper-2","tag-live-mint","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704817635},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10320"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174493\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}