Faced with unprecedented conditions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, institutions, organisations, private companies and individuals are rapidly working together with the aim of sharing information and knowledge in open access to help develop solutions to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. But as the movement grows and these initiatives proliferate, the need to identify the most reliable sources of information and data becomes even more pressing.

For this reason, with this article, Social Innovation Academy wants to highlight a selection of 8 renowned and reliable COVID-19 platforms that gather research, initiatives and other resources of interest in relation to the pandemic.

COVID-19 Response United Nations

Everyone is talking about the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19). Be sure to get your facts from reliable sources. Along with the World Health Organization, which is the leading authority on scientific and public health information on the new virus, UN offices, field missions, agencies, funds and programmes are providing new information in their spheres of expertise, as it becomes available. Find out more about the UN’s COVID-19 response here.

COVID-19 Health System Response Monitor WHO-European Commission, and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies.

The Health System Response Monitor (HSRM) was designed in response to the COVID-19 outbreak to collect and organise up-to-date information on how countries are responding to the crisis. It focuses primarily on the responses of health systems but also captures wider public health initiatives. This is a joint undertaking by the WHO Regional Office for Europe, the European Commission, and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies. See here for more information on the HSRM.

Big Data Platforms for a Global Pandemic Chinese Academy of Sciences

In response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, a Chinese Academy of Sciences programme known as Big Earth Data Science Engineering (CASEarth) began efforts to organise data and information towards curbing the outbreak. CASEarth coordinated a national effort to develop a global big data platform for coronavirus. The platform has been publishing and disseminating timely, authoritative scientific data and information concerning COVID-19, including detection methods, electron micrographs, genomes, scientific literature, results from ongoing scientific research, and a collection of virus strains from the National Pathogen Microbial Resource Bank. These resources are valuable for scientific studies on COVID-19 and for experts active in the prevention and control of COVID-19 infections. In addition to COVID-19 genome data, the system has so far integrated 3,135 coronavirus genomes and 32,865 nucleic acid sequences from 20,241 strains, separated from 496 different host types and 568 collection sites. For more information, visit.

COVID Action Platform World Economic Forum 

The World Economic Forum (WEF), in its capacity as a partner to the World Health Organization, is mobilising all stakeholders to work together to minimise the impact of COVID-19 on public health and limit its potential to cause further disruption to lives and economies around the world. In this context, the new COVID Action Platform will focus on three priorities: 

• Galvanise the global business community for collective action 
• Protect people’s livelihoods and facilitate business continuity 
• Mobilise cooperation and business support for the COVID-19 response. 

The platform has a special website, ‘Strategic Intelligence’, containing the latest strategic trends and research from the World Economic Forum regarding COVID-19.

OPSI-COVID-19 Innovative Response Tracker OPSI-OECD, The Center for Public Impact and GovInsider

In the framework of the Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI), the Center for Public Impact and GovInsider are building an open repository with examples of how individuals, organisations and local authorities are changing the way they deliver services in the age of COVID-19.

These organisations have launched a call for an innovative government solution with the aim of gathering new initiatives in a public repository. For more information, visit.

COVID 19- Global Science Portal International Science Council

The International Science Council (ISC) has launched a COVID-19 Global Science Portal. This reliable platform focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic shares scientific commentary and analysis and provides access to information on various initiatives, highlighting the scale and scope of response and encouraging ISC members and partners to collaborate and share best practices during this global emergency. The ISC welcomes contributions from the international scientific community. For more information, visit.

Citizen Science Resources related to COVID-19 Pandemic Citizen Science Association

The Citizen Science Association (CSA) has launched a COVID-19 web page presenting a selection of resources related to the current pandemic. It contains links to citizen science and crowdsourcing projects that might be of interest to:

• citizens wanting to help tackle the virus
• researchers looking for support during interruptions to their fieldwork
• parents looking for ideas to support children who are homeschooling
• anyone looking for useful ways to fill their time while self-isolating.

For more information, visit.

COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19)The Allen Institute for AI

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Allen Institute for AI has partnered with leading groups to prepare and distribute the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19), a reliable COVID-19 platform with free resources comprising over 51,000 scholarly articles, including over 40,000 with full text, about COVID-19 and the coronavirus family of viruses for use by the global research community.

The dataset is intended to mobilise researchers to apply recent advances in natural language processing to generate new insights in support of the fight against this infectious disease.

CORD-19 is a quick and easy way to search the CORD-19 corpus, and CoViz allows you to discover associations between concepts appearing in the dataset. For more information, visit.

With these 8 reliable COVID-19 platforms, Social Innovation Academy aims to bring together sources of information that we can all rely on.