Appeal To Provide Your COVID Health Status

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Permalink Reply by John D on April 28, 2020 at 20:46

This seems rather dubious. I think I'd prefer to let our medical services get on with the job of dealing with the pandemic, rather than submerging them in masses of suspect data from non-medical untrained individuals.

I don't think this appeal comes from England's Health Service. I don't see an NHS logo. It appears to have originated from a commercial organisation principally interested in ( selling ? ) nutrition advice ( and products ? ).

I'll keep my personal data to myself 

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Permalink Reply by Julie on April 29, 2020 at 8:23

I received this over a month ago and was also suspicious but I checked with Public Health colleagues who I work with in South East London and they confirmed that it is legitimate - you’ll see it is linked to King’s. At the time, they just cautioned against the risk of widespread sharing of it i.e. diluting other public health messaging around distancing, isolation and when to call 111 and the associated risk of confusing people. Really useful amongst those who are already engaged with public health messages. So individual concerns about sharing data aside, it was developed in collaboration with NHS/PH colleagues who I assume are still using it (I haven’t asked again recently) and there are tens of thousands of users registered. You can see heat map data by borough.

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Permalink Reply by John D on April 29, 2020 at 8:43

Thanks Julie.

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Permalink Reply by Costa on April 29, 2020 at 10:37

It's a great research tool, made by Guys and St. Thomas' Hopsital and Kings College - so it is legitimate and only takes a miute a day to update.

It's been reassuring to see the number of suspected cases in Haringey and around the country come down so quickly over the past weeks. Still be careful though when out and about, their model predicts one in a hundred in Haringey currently have it 

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Permalink Reply by Tessa on April 29, 2020 at 23:32

I'm more than happy to be contributing data to this and have been for about a month. It is indeed an amazing research tool and it is only by collecting data from the general population and not just those getting sick and needing health services that we will better understand Covid-19, which in turn will feed in to developing prevention strategies and treatment. Impressive effort by academics at Kings College London and partners to get this together so quickly, get the app released and the data coming in.

There is a current push to urge those over 70 and anyone with a pre-existing health issue such as heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, cancer, dementia and other age-related conditions to contribute, or have a family member/friend/carer do so for them - an app update means you can now set up multiple user profiles - because this group are currently under-represented in the data.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on April 30, 2020 at 6:25

I’ve been inputting my own data into this for about four weeks now.  It’s been interesting to see the change in the London thermal map from dark to light as lockdown has impacted on reported symptoms, but as Costa says 1 in 100 reporting possible Covid symptoms in Haringey isn’t indicating we’re anywhere near through it yet.  I’ve also been keeping an eye on my old home town in the north east and it’s gone from a low incidence of reported symptoms to higher than London which is rather sobering.

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Permalink Reply by Lydia Walter on May 1, 2020 at 6:59

I’ve been using this app for about four weeks. Once set up it takes less than 1 minute each day to report. You get access to research updates and webinar from professionals regarding the research (should you want to know). 
There are currently approximately 2 million contributors. If there were 10 times that number it would make the research far more accurate and help scientists to further understand the virus. The research team would like their app downloaded, used daily and shared with as many people as possible. 

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