Preliminary epidemiological analysis on children and adolescents with novel coronavirus disease 2019 outside Hubei Province, China: an observational study utilizing crowdsourced data

Brandon Michael Henry; Maria Helena S Oliveira

The coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak is rapidly expanding across the world and presents a significant public health emergency with the potential of becoming pandemic. 1 As of March 1, 2020, cases of COVID-19 have been reported in over 60 countries. In early stages of epidemics with emerging pathogens, real-time analysis of accurate and robust epidemiological and clinical data is essential to developing interventional strategies and guiding public health decisionmaking. 2, 3 Such data can provide insight into infectivity, routes of transmission, disease severity, and outcomes, thus enabling epidemiologic modelling and improved public health responses. 4, 5 Line list data, which includes individual patient-level data on important epidemiological and clinical variables, is rarely available early during an outbreak with a novel pathogen. 5 However, recognizing the utility of such data and its ability to provide for real-time analyses, multiple academic groups have been curating line list data using crowdsourcing and openly sharing the data with the scientific community. 4, 5 Crowdsourcing enables the collection of data from multiple platforms including health-care-oriented social networks, government and public health agencies, and global news sources.