A year into the pandemic, COVID-19 still puzzles researchers, but the public release of a new database may help scientists solve some of the mysteries lingering around this devastating disease.
An international team of researchers from institutions including Boston Children's Hospital, Northeastern University and the University of Oxford has partnered with Google.org, Google's nonprofit subsidiary, to release Global.health, a platform that contains information about almost 10 million COVID-19 cases from over 100 countries. The goal, researchers said, is to help scientists across the globe answer a wide range of questions, from measuring the impact of newly emerged virus variants on different age groups, including children, to understanding how likely a public response is to help curb spread in certain areas.