Amidst the global COVID-19 pandemic, data on the incidence and mortality trends can help organizations to assess contingency plans and make informed, data-driven decisions in real-time.

While much information already exists in disparate sources all over cyberspace, one data services and tech company has decided to create a unified source of epidemiological data supplemented by relevant information such as population densities and geolocation.

Snowflake, the cloud data platform, has announced that Starschema, a data services and technology company, has listed a free-of-charge, public data set that serves as a ‘single-source of truth’ on the incidence and mortality of COVID-19 cases on Snowflake’s free-to-join marketplace, the Snowflake Data Exchange.

With the Starschema’s COVID-19 incidence data set, public health authorities have access to phylogenetic studies to reference and identify whether particular strains of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease, carry a higher risk. Governments will also be able to make informed data-driven decisions for civil contingency planning based on data from neighboring states.

In the private sector, enterprises can use the data to support business contingency operations and analyze supply chains for possible vulnerabilities.

Starschema CTO, Tamas Foldi said: “Everyone is dealing with the effects of COVID-19 in one way or another. Our goal is to deliver the highest quality data sound enough to stake lives on, with the utmost transparency. Snowflake is helping us deliver on that goal so public health professionals, contingency planners, and enterprises can best respond to this global epidemic.”

Snowflake’s cloud data platform—a secure, fully-governed platform for sharing and exchanging data—enabled Starschema to create the potentially useful COVID-19 pandemic data set by cleaning and preparing the disparate sources of data in formatted different from each other. The resultant easy-to-use, analytics-ready format can then be accessed in near real-time by public and private sector data consumers to quickly build new models and applications.

Snowflake’s Head of Data Exchange, Matt Glickman noted: “As the pandemic progresses, we can expect data to play an increasingly important role in both public and private operations. It’s essential organizations have access to accurate, near real-time data in this rapidly evolving environment and we’re humbled that the platform architecture is uniquely positioned to help democratize access to Starschema’s data in this time of need.”

Starschema plans to further enrich their COVID-19 incidence data set with data such as local emergency measures, demographic information for affected geographies, and additional reporting levels from regions, states, and country resources.

Interested readers can request access to the free, public Starschema COVID-19 incidence data set on the Snowflake Data Exchange here.

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