Drowning In Data
Recently the Ministry of Health had launched a new web portal with ton of informative COVID-19 data. This information is very details and nicely presented. However the information may be too much for a normal audience who is interested to know what is the daily number. As a data guy, I also feel immune with the figure after seeing it day after day, not much difference with 15,000, 23,000 or 11,000. This makes people think the pandemic is over and start enjoying in public area with family happily.
Another issue arises when people is flooded with more and more data. When one set of data is shown and supported by another set of detail breakdown, people mind can be unconsciously led to think in the scope of data presented. For example, one will treat the daily reported COVID positive cases is the real situation and the community also uses the same figure in discussion.
The visualization that is presented here focuses on only a single number; the daily positive COVID cases. The intension is to show the more realistic situation so that you can take more precaution.
Current situation:
Daily COVID positive cases are the statistics based on the carried out COVID tests. However, there is a large number of hidden cases which are not included in the daily reported number. What are the actual positive cases if we increase the testing rate per population on the suspected group?
From the number reported, we know that daily COVID testing rate is only around 0.5% population and still a large number of suspected group is not tested. What if we increase the population test to a reasonable number like 1% or 1.25% with the same daily positive rate as assumption ? The calculated number will tell you what is the possible daily COVID positive number in the community.
