#2: Data and Health: lessons learned from the management of the COVID-19 crisis

Talk with Prof. Dr. Christovam Barcellos (ICICT - Fiocruz, Brazil) and M.Sc. Mara Mendes (IfPOL-WWU, Germany) In 2020 and 2021, the world experienced the biggest Health crisis of the century. The ability of governments and health organizations to respond to this crisis was directly associated with the ability they had to collect data. Perhaps never before in human history have we gathered so much information about one disease in such a short time as we have with COVID-19. We tracked the dissemination of the virus around the world, searched for community transmission, mapped the genome of the variants of the virus. We also developed, tested, and approved many vaccines worldwide and saw the short and medium-term effects in entire adult populations. All this in less than two years. To make it possible, governments needed to adapt or even build information structures that allowed faster and smarter interventions. There was also the need to build structures for mass vaccination campaigns. Due to many factors,