CoronaSurveys: Using Surveys with Indirect Reporting to Estimate the Incidence and Evolution of Epidemics

TL;DR

CoronaSurveys introduces a privacy-preserving, indirect survey method to estimate COVID-19 incidence and progression, providing a cost-effective alternative for resource-limited countries to monitor epidemics.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel application of the network scale-up method for epidemic monitoring through anonymous surveys, demonstrating its effectiveness for COVID-19.

Findings

Effective estimation of COVID-19 incidence using indirect surveys

Preserves privacy while collecting broad population data

Suitable for resource-limited settings

Abstract

The world is suffering from a pandemic called COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. National governments have problems evaluating the reach of the epidemic, due to having limited resources and tests at their disposal. This problem is especially acute in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). Hence, any simple, cheap and flexible means of evaluating the incidence and evolution of the epidemic in a given country with a reasonable level of accuracy is useful. In this paper, we propose a technique based on (anonymous) surveys in which participants report on the health status of their contacts. This indirect reporting technique, known in the literature as network scale-up method, preserves the privacy of the participants and their contacts, and collects information from a larger fraction of the population (as compared to individual surveys). This technique has been deployed in the CoronaSurveys project, which has been collecting reports for the COVID-19 pandemic for more than two months. Results obtained by CoronaSurveys show the power and flexibility of the approach, suggesting that it could be an inexpensive and powerful tool for LMICs.