A Framework For Sharing Publicly Available Data To Inform The COVID-19 Outbreak in Africa: A South African Case Study

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, became a globally declared pandemic in February 2020. Currently, the only management of the disease depends on travel bans and social distancing. These strategies have resulted in large numbers of people in seclusion, with limited access to accurate information. To update the public, especially in South Africa, announcements are made by the minister of health daily. These announcements narrate the confirmed COVID-19 cases and include the age, gender, and travel history of people who have tested positive for the disease. Additionally, the South African National Institute for Communicable Diseases updates a daily infographic summarising the number of tests performed, confirmed cases, mortality rate, and the regions affected. However, the age of the patient and other nuanced data regarding the transmission is only shared in the daily announcements and not on the updated infographic. To disseminate this information, the Data Science for Social Impact research group at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, has worked on curating and applying publicly available data in a way that is accessible and understandable using a dashboard. Through collaborative practices, a variety of challenges related to publicly available data in South Africa came to the fore. These include shortcomings in the accessibility, integrity, and data management practices between governmental departments and the South African public. In this paper, solutions to these problems will be shared by using a publicly available dashboard as a case study.