Infodemic amidst pandemic.

Byline: Mutaher Khan

THE accelerating number of Covid-19 cases has turned the world upside down. From knowing a guy who knows someone with the virus to it penetrating our close friends and family circle, the situation has become eerily similar to an apocalyptic movie.

The government has tried to take a proactive role when it comes to providing details about the number of cases, deaths and geographical breakdowns. It also quickly set up covid.gov.pk and built an app towards the same end. But that hasn't stopped some well-meaning Samaritans to play their part as well. In this piece, I will try to shed light on some of those efforts.

Let's start with Covid-19 Health Resource Map by Jaya Rajwani, a Karachi-based computer engineer leading the tech team for a local startup. It's basically an information portal that gives you details on testing centres, isolation facilities, tertiary hospitals and pharmacies across the country.

As the name suggests, the link directs to a map where you can choose your point of interest and get a geographical attribute of that. For example, if you select testing facilities, it will show you its name, address, per-day capacity and activity status. Similarly, for hospitals, there are details on the number of beds with plans to add ventilators.

'I have a tech background and wanted to put my skills to the benefit of the country. At the time, a lot of people were trying to create dashboards and make predictions, which honestly is too ambitious based on the available data,' she tells Dawn.

Well-meaning citizens need to be lauded, but there is no denying that the crowdsourcing of information in the biggest health crisis of the century is a risky bet

'Back in the university, I had developed a geo-tagging model and used that for Covid-19-related data, which comes from sources like the National Institute of Health, provincial ministries, official Twitter accounts plus a small network of volunteers,' she explains.

Similarly, there is covidpk.net, another citizen-led attempt that lets you ask a doctor questions and has other useful information. 'When members of my own family contracted the virus, I personally went through the troubles of looking for supplies and all. That led us to the idea of there being a dedicated database, instead of having to search on Facebook or sift through WhatsApp messages whenever there is need for, say, a plasma donor,' says freelance journalist Sana Batool, who is part of the website's team.

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