The Indian Institute of Technology in Madras (IIT-Madras), the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), and the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) are collaborating with a private technology firm to upgrade a website collating critical COVID-19 data. The website will provide a standardised format for the public and researchers studying the pandemic, according to a news report.
Researchers will automate the process of data collection from central and state government websites and collate them, providing historical data as well as analyses on cases, recoveries, and vaccination levels. Officials have explained that the website offers a comprehensive view of the pandemic across India by providing data on confirmed cases, active and recovered cases, tests, and fatalities. The portal also recently started showing vaccination administration statuses for single-dose and fully vaccinated individuals. The collaboration will host a new website further upgrading the data. The portal provides a valuable service by making this data publicly available at one place, which is important to understand the pandemic, a representative from IIT-Madras stated.
The website, which up until now was run by volunteers based on a crowd-sourcing model, provided valuable data to the public as well as researchers studying the pandemic. The organisers recently announced that they would stop their operations beyond 31 October 2021. The data on COVID-19 is being put out in the public domain by various government entities. This initiative collates all this data and provides a one-stop-shop in a standardised format for the benefit of researchers and the general public.
The website has been available since the pandemic started and has tracked the pandemic across geographies in India and has made valuable contributions. The new version would ensure the availability of data on COVID-19 about confirmed cases, active, recovered, deceased, and tested for all the 36 states and union territories in an automated and robust manner until March 2022. Further, the consolidated data will be made available to the general audience through a public repository with appropriate APIs (application programming interface) matching those currently available at the earlier portal to ensure the least disruption to applications and consumers of information. The new portal will continue the efforts of the COVID-19 India portal with historical and newly collated data from diverse sources. Beyond this, the project also envisages the creation of a semantic layer on the data to provide enhanced search and analysis.
India has been developing and deploying several technology-driven solutions to help fight the virus. In July, the Indian Institute of Technology in Hyderabad (IIT-Hyderabad) developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered COVID-19 testing kit, COVIHOME, that can produce results in 30 minutes for both symptomatic and asymptomatic patients.
As OpenGov Asia had reported, COVIHOME was the country’s first rapid electronic COVID-19 RNA test kit. It was developed by a team from the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT-Hyderabad. The technology is validated by the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (ICMR-CCMB), Hyderabad. The major benefit of this testing kit is that it does not require RT-PCR (Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction), an expert human resource, and a BSL 2 lab facility for the extraction of RNA. It enables citizens to take the test at home without professional supervision. The in-house samples and hospital samples were confirmed for their positivity or negativity by the RT-PCR method. The validation report confirmed the kit’s efficiency of 94.2%, sensitivity 91.3%, and specificity 98.2%.
