Accessing Open COVID-19 Data via the COVIDcast Epidata API
One of our primary initiatives at the Delphi COVIDcast project
has been to curate a diverse set of COVID-related data streams,
and to make them freely available through our
COVIDcast Epidata API.
These include both novel signals that we have collected and analyzed ourselves,
such as our symptom survey distributed by Facebook
to its users, Google’s symptom survey whose results are delivered to us,
the percentage of doctor’s visits due to COVID-like illness,
and results from Quidel’s antigen tests;
and also existing signals, such as the confirmed case counts
and deaths reported by USA Facts and Johns Hopkins University.
The COVIDcast API freely provides researchers and decision-makers
with the data they need to conduct their work, and
is conveniently accessible via easy-to-use Python
and R packages.