A new interactive map created by Facebook shines a new light on the spread of coronavirus: Rather than rely on the number of people who have tested positive for COVID-19, it shows how many people are reporting coronavirus symptoms on a county-by-county level.
The map uses data from a survey of over a million Facebook users conducted by Carnegie Mellon University researchers, according to a Facebook statement.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook's 2 billion-person user base makes it uniquely positioned to help researchers conduct sweeping surveys to better understand the COVID-19 outbreak.
"Facebook is uniquely suited to run these surveys because we serve a global community of billions of people and can do statistically accurate sampling," Zuckerberg wrote in a post Monday morning. "We do this in a privacy protective way where only the researchers at Carnegie Mellon see individual survey responses — and Facebook only sees aggregated data."
Facebook plans to continue carrying out weekly surveys to to keep the map updated. While the map currently only reflects US counties, the company will start running surveys globally in the coming weeks.
According to Zuckerberg, the data gathered from Facebook users could help health authorities and governments decide how and when to reopen certain parts of the world in the coming months.
Here's how the map works.
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