What the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic Has Reinforced: The Need for Accurate Data

Simone Arvisais-Anhalt; Christoph U Lehmann; Jason Y Park; Ellen Araj; Michael Holcomb; Andrew R Jamieson; Samuel McDonald; Richard J Medford; Trish M Perl; Seth M Toomay; Amy E Hughes; Melissa L McPheeters; Mujeeb Basit

doi:10.1093/cid/ciaa1686

What the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic Has Reinforced: The Need for Accurate Data

Clin Infect Dis. 2021 Mar 15;72(6):920-923. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciaa1686.

Authors

Simone Arvisais-Anhalt¹, Christoph U Lehmann^{2

3

4

5}, Jason Y Park^{1

6}, Ellen Araj¹, Michael Holcomb⁴, Andrew R Jamieson⁴, Samuel McDonald^{2

7}, Richard J Medford^{2

8}, Trish M Perl⁸, Seth M Toomay⁹, Amy E Hughes⁵, Melissa L McPheeters^{10

11

12}, Mujeeb Basit^{2

13}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Pathology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA.
² Clinical Informatics Center, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA.
³ Department of Pediatrics, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA.
⁴ Lyda Hill Department of Bioinformatics, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA.
⁵ Department of Population and Data Sciences, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA.
⁶ Eugene McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA.
⁷ Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA.
⁸ Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA.
⁹ Department of Radiology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Health Policy, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA.
¹¹ Department of Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA.
¹² Center for Improving the Public's Health through Informatics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA.
¹³ Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Cardiology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the United States’ existing national public health informatics infrastructure. This report details the factors that have contributed to COVID-19 data inaccuracies and reporting delays and their effect on the modeling and monitoring of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19; data integrity; data modeling; information technology infrastructure; public health informatics.

MeSH terms

COVID-19*
Coronavirus*
Humans
Pandemics
Public Health
SARS-CoV-2