COVID-19

This page is meant to be a learning resource for Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). If you are not already aware of the COVID-19 Risk Mitigation Strategies, please see:
 * Learn to Protect Yourself - WHO

Please, keep in mind, that all Medical and Public Health-related information, are cross-checked before posting or publication. Since the understanding and knowledge of COVID-19 is still evolving daily, this may lead to the information found on this page being outdated. In order to prevent any spread of misinformation, and to ensure the safety of all, remember to always check the primary sources! These include:
 * Health Agencies like WHO;
 * Official Centers for Disease Control;
 * European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control/coronavirus
 * Global Covid-19 Tracker & Interactive Charts
 * Worldmeters Coronavirus
 * Official references for Government Agencies;
 * Peer-reviewed Journals as evidence.

Do not disseminate fake news or spread misinformation.

See also: External Links for additional information and resources in your Region.

Important Note
In the case of a new disease (such as COVID-19), the gain in knowledge in epidemiology is highly dynamic. Therefore, when referring to learning resources, always refer to trustworthy sources that have the scientific expertise and also the capacity to receive, interpret and classify the current scientific findings for the public. A learning resource can in no way replace this.


 * You could learn in this learning resource why the curves provided by epidemiology provide a kind of bell-shaped curve for the infected and why other curves (e.g. Susceptible, Recovered) have a more sigmoid, S-shaped form.
 * How the actual curves or resulting recommendations look like should only be perceived from officially authorized or from scientifically proven sources  (peer-reviewed journals in public health, virology, epidemiology) and not from this learning resource.

Subpages
Content–specific subpages. Please keep yourself updated through information released by Official Public Health agencies. According to the learning resource, start with a general overview of lessons from COVID-19, before digging into any details that are of special interest for you.
 * /Lessons from COVID-19/
 * /Risk Mitigation Strategies/ and /Social Distancing/
 * /Mathematical Modelling/
 * /Time Series and COVID-19 Data/
 * /Connectivity/
 * /Supply Chain Management/
 * /Adjusted Number of Cases/
 * /Collaborative Efforts/
 * /IT-Infrastructure/ — For: Reduction of Physical Person-to-Person (PtP) Contact; e-Learning - e.g. OpenWHO.
 * /Workflow Transformation/
 * /Positive Change/
 * /Economy/
 * /Sports/
 * /Lockdown/
 * /Efficacy of lockdown/ by Dan Polansky
 * /All-cause deaths/ by Dan Polansky
 * Summary of All COVID-19 Projects

Author Specific Subpages
Author subpages are welcome due to the rapid change of global challenges and knowledge concerning the spread of this pandemic. Utilizing the User > Subpages is an option to share and create content-specific subpages, giving others a place they can learn to discuss aspects perform cross-checking with current peer-reviewed publications about the COVID-19 Pandemic, gain understanding, and other helpful information. Please incorporate peer-reviewed jounrals into you discussion. Add target groups for the subpages.
 * COVID-19/Julian Mendez
 * COVID-19/Dan Polansky - /Dan Polansky/Efficacy of lockdown/
 * COVID-19/Jan Barkmann
 * COVID-19/Iluvalar
 * COVID-19/Guy vandegrift
 * COVID-19 Open Science Community on Zenodo

Learning Tasks

 * (Health Agencies) Explore the self-protection and travel guidelines of WHO. Explain why it is necessary to visit the info websites of public health agencies on a regular basis during an outbreak.
 * (Burden on Health Systems) Explain why "staying at home whenever possible" will slow down spread of the COVID-19 disease! What are benefits of slowing down the epidemiological spread of the disease? What are the challenges (lock down)? (Consider also the impact on the health system if there is an influenza outbreak at the same time). Why is the capacity of Intensive Care Units (ICU) important for COVID-19 response?
 * (Respiratory Diseases) Consider patients with chronic diseases of the respiratory system. How can you reduce the risk and minimize the contact to other people?
 * (e-Learning) If we consider the need for reductions of contacts to other people:
 * (Videoconferencing and Face to Face Meeting) How can we use e-Learning environments to assure the educational system will continue to work without face to face meeting?
 * (Preparation Time) Consider the preparation time of e-learning material for schools and universities. How much time is required to allow e-learning courses to be developed? What are collaborative approaches, e.g. on Wikiversity or other collaborative platforms, to reduce the preparation time?
 * (Open Educational Resources) How can Open Educational Resources help to share the costs of developments?
 * (Wiki2Reveal) How would you use Wikiversity with Wiki2Reveal for capacity building and learning? What are other technical options in your IT environment, that you could use in times when face to face class is not possible anymore?
 * (Home Schooling for Medical Staff) If schools are closed maybe medical staff must stay at home to care for their children. These staff members of health care facilities are not able to provide a health service. How would you solve the conflict of interest?
 * (OpenWHO) Analyze the online courses and information portal of the WHO. What are the target groups of the learning resources? Why are e-learning resources about COVID-19 provided as online courses? What are the requirements and constraints of those online courses? Why is quality assurance and timely updates important for these online courses?
 * (/IT-Infrastructure/) Due to recommendation of reduction of close physical contacts, social contacts and contacts in business and economy require a workflow transformation.
 * Identify the requirements and constraints for tranformation process from physical face-to-face meeting towards video conferencing and other social and economic activities towards a collaborative workflow with available IT-infrastructure!
 * Communities on Wikiversity, Wikipedia, ... are communities that work collaboratively towards a common goal. What workflows within Wiki communities can he helpful for this transformation process and what are additional features that are required?
 * (Sustainable Development Goals) Sustainability in the health domain requires an approach that assures a long term social, ecological, political and economical response to global challenge of infectious diseases (including international collaboration). What are the main consequences you would expect from a joint fight against communicable diseases? Viruses do not respect political borders, so explain how international collaboration can serve the needs. Explain how sustainability in the health domain has an impact on the sustainability of cities and communities.
 * (/Workflow Transformation/) Due to the epidemiological requirements constraints in all social, economical, cultural, ... domains (e.g. lockdown) workflow transformations are required. Look into your environment you are living and working in. What are the workflow transformations that are required, planned, and implemented in your environment?
 * (Videoconferencing and 3D Modelling) Explore some examples of digital 3D models here and explain how 3D models can be used on markers with AR.js  in a video conference. Explain how these 3D models got increased importance during home schooling scenarios during COVID-19.
 * (/Collaborative Efforts/) The COVID-19 epidemic is a global challenge. People perceive that health is a common good and all societal groups are affected. A virus does not respect borders and does not care if someone has much money or not. Identify positive global change that can be triggered by collaborative work and mutual support against the COVID-19 crisis:
 * (Comparison with Climate Change) Move national focus of health service benefit (e.g. access to vaccination solely to a single country) towards a collaborative effort to fight a global challenge. What is similar to climate change risk mitigation and what are differences between climate change threats and epidemiological threats?
 * (Swarm Intelligence) compare economical optimization and focus on financial benefits with the concept of Swarm Intelligence. What are lessons learnt from swarm intelligence, that can be applied to the COVID-19 outbreak?
 * Do global players pick responsibility for global challenges? Who carries the burden of the health service delivery system and a crisis that affects nearly all economical, social, cultural, ... domains? Do you see a mutual support and collaborative effort? How can you support and appreciate collaborative efforts?
 * (COVID-19 Changemaking Resources for a more beautiful world) Millions of people, that are not sick, financially badly affected or part of the medical staff at the front, experience an unprecedented pause button of their normal routines. How can we make use of this unprecedented historic opportunity to collectively sense and step into the more beautiful world we would like to live in? Contribute to and absorb inspiration, tools and ideas in this collaborative resource treasure chest.

National Activities for Risk Mitigation
National activities of states might differ concerning how risk assessment is performed nationally. The WHO is an intergovernment organisation and therefore has; This learning resource addresses the collaborative aspect of member states to combat the global challenge of COVID-19. Risk Management is an evolutionary task, that must adapt to new scientific insights into COVID-19. The national activities can also be coordinated with international activities of other member states, so that the new scientific insights and requirements can be shared and integrated into internationally coordinated joint efforts.
 * a political dimension of international negotiations and policy making and
 * a health dimension, to provide health for all in all member states.

Data

 * Look for institutionally maintained COVID-19 API (Application Programming Interface) to retrieve data from API and process the dat,a e.g. with KnitR, and create every day a new report based on the current data (see also Dynamic Document Generation). This is a generic learning task that can be applied in general on reporting that is dependent on a daily update for decision makers or in a learning environment in which public health management and risk mitigation strategies are discussed.