Facebook will expand its symptom tracking survey globally to measure the spread of COVID-19

Two weeks after beginning to survey users about disease symptoms in an effort to track the spread of COVID-19, Facebook said Monday that early results showed promise — and that the effort will roll out internationally beginning Wednesday. Carnegie Mellon University, which conducts the survey, said that 150,000 people a day are now submitting symptom reports after clicking on a link in the News Feed. The university does not share any information about symptoms back to Facebook.

In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that initial findings shared by Carnegie Mellon correlate with public data about confirmed cases of COVID-19, an important signal that symptom surveys will soon be able to forecast the disease’s...

Continue reading…