Girls of Steel x COVIDcast: Update #1

When the whole world was shutting down in March, Delphi was hard at work developing COVIDcast, a map to track and record COVID-19 data. Girls of Steel joined the effort in May, just as the platform was being launched. This was not Delphi’s first rodeo. They had been reporting data for influenza since 2013 on their website. Indicators on the map range from COVID-related doctor visits to the number of positive cases for the COVID antigen test. Since joining COVIDcast, GoS members have worked on projects that include fixing the visibility of the map’s borders, tracking people who wear masks, and adding questions to the survey sent to the public asking about vaccine distribution. Completing these involved a significant amount of teamwork, problem solving, and creative thinking. 

COVIDcast is updated every couple weeks. It recently updated into a new format, so it’s simpler for people to use and more organized. The information varies from the number of cases to the percentage of people wearing masks and abiding by CDC regulations. This type of information can influence a person’s decision such as ‘should I go grocery shopping today’ or ‘is it safe to go travel and see my family’ and proves especially helpful for people of higher health risks. 

As Girls of Steel, we try to improve the website and make it a more effective tool for the public. As members of the public, we have an outside viewpoint. Our different perspectives can help to see what can be changed to make the website better for people like us. That comes in two parts: looking for bugs and adding enhancements. We look for bugs, or errors that can come with new updates. Before those updates are released, we find those issues and report them on GitHub, so Delphi can fix them. In addition, we come up with ideas for enhancements, which are new additions and suggestions that could be useful for people to know. One of our ideas that has made it onto the website is the percentage of mask-wearing in the public, and that information comes from surveys Delphi runs on Facebook users. The resulting map shows a direct correlation between mask-wearing and low rates of COVID symptoms in communities, which hopefully can influence more of the public to wear masks. 

When you report something on GitHub you are able to label it as an enhancement, bug, or other. A bug is an issue that you find within the COVIDcast website, such as an incorrect or confusing statistic. An enhancement however is an addition that can be made to the website, such as design or additional statistics. When tracking a bug you have to look not only at the surface level of the bug that you see, but also how far the bug stretches. Say you look for a certain statistic in a certain area but a bug shows up. First you assess what the bug is impacting, then you look so see if the bug is also shown for other regions. Once you find your bug and to what degree it affects the website, you go to the issues page on GitHub. Once there, you can select a new issue and then follow the given guide on how to describe the bug or enhancement.

If it is a bug and not an enhancement, you should supply a screenshot and tell what browser you are on as well. If it is an enhancement, those are not necessary. The key thing when tracking and reporting a bug is to look into every detail. Saying that two tables look mixed up instead of just focusing on how one table looks strange, can save people a lot of time when they go to fix the bug.  

 Being a part of COVIDcast has left a profound impact on all of us.  A member of the team says, “Personally, this has been one of the most educational experiences I have been a part of.  Since November, I have contributed to this initiative; since then, I have gained various opportunities such as working on a separate research project extending out of the data collected by COVIDcast.”