Coronavirus Update: Google Offers Free COVID-19 Public Datasets To Researchers, Analysts And Data Scientists

Researchers and scientists are working towards finding a solution to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Google Cloud has offered free public datasets to assist them in this endeavor.

The COVID-19 Public Dataset Program introduced by Google Cloud will help make data more accessible to data scientists, analysts and researchers.

“The program will host a repository of public datasets that relate to the COVID-19 crisis and make them free to access and analyze. These include the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering (JHU CSSE) dataset, Global Health Data from the World Bank, and OpenStreetMap data,” the team at Google Cloud wrote in a post.

The public datasets are available as part of the COVID-19 Public Datasets Program for query in BigQuery by default. BigQuery ML allows users to create and execute machine learning models using standard SQL queries.

Google Cloud has labeled the dataset programs that fall in this category with a “COVID-19” label.

Apart from this offering, Google earlier announced an $800 million support to health organizations, governments, small and medium-sized businesses and health workers on the frontline of the coronavirus pandemic.

For Google Cloud, the tech giant has made a pool of $20 million in credits for researches and academic institutions “to leverage our computing capabilities and infrastructure as they study potential therapies and vaccines, track critical data, and identify new ways to combat COVID-19.” For more details on how to apply for credits, visit the Google for Education website. The company has also set aside $340 million in Google Ads credits for all small and medium-sized businesses that are impacted due to this deadly virus.

Meanwhile, the coronavirus death toll has soared to 37,878 as of March 31, 6.00 a.m. Eastern Time. According to Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center, 788,522 people have tested positive for COVID-19. In the U.S., the coronavirus cases have crossed 160,000 with 3170 deaths. People are advised to strictly follow social distancing and stay at home as much as possible.