Malaysia’s information, data, and statistics on the Covid-19 pandemic are now being made open-source. Health Director-General Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah announced that this move could help the entire community– nationally and internationally– to beat the pandemic.
The information is collected from multiple sources. The open-souce information contains anonymous granular data from hospitals, such as the admissions rate, critical care (ICU) rates, and even analysis on cluster-based transmission of Covid-19.
(Credit: GitHub)
Additionally, information collected by MySejahtera will be made public as well. Mobility data, uniquely tracking location and check-in time of all Malaysians, provides insights on the time density of check-ins.
Dr Noor Hisham then credits frontliners and Crisis Preparedness & Response Centre (CPRC) officers all over the country, who collect this data every day.
Just the big picture for now
Currently the data is still quite macro, mainly reporting on the “big picture”. More detailed and granular data breakdown such as by age group, existing comorbidities, and vaccinated rate is not yet available, although the data files note that “the scope and granularity of this data will evolve over time”, meaning we’ll have to just wait and see.
Better late than never
Although certain groups have been requesting Covid-19 data to be made available since the pandemic began last year, most netizens agree that this move is better late than never.
Someone has to put this to good use. No point just having data and not doing anything about it. Data should be analysed to effectively determine the cause of outbreaks and where also to find solutions among other things.
— Sharan Pretam Singh (@PretamSharan) July 23, 2021
Interestingly, Malaysia is one of the few countries that has made our information public.
Edouard Mathieu, the Head of Data at the Our World In Data website, noted that this was ‘an excellent initiative’.
An excellent initiative by the Ministry of Health of Malaysia: they now publish all their COVID-19 data in a well-documented GitHub repository.
— Edouard Mathieu (@redouad) July 24, 2021
I’m surprised that 18 months into the pandemic, so few countries do this! The world needs open and accessible data to fight COVID-19. https://t.co/Kqt878BKys
You can see all the open-source information via this link HERE.
MOH has introduced open-sourcing our data on the pandemic at GitHub platform: https://t.co/zwJOQ6vB5B
— Noor Hisham Abdullah (@DGHisham) July 23, 2021
We hope that we can broaden our analysis & leverage on intelligence from all corners of society, & sites like @OurWorldInData pull from our repo & feature our data.
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