New Covid Index from TotalAnalysis reveals disturbing flaws in data transparency across the world, raising questions about the WHO and future reporting on vaccinations

LONDON, Dec. 10, 2020 -- UK independent research group, TotalAnalysis, has today (10th December 2020) launched the Covid Data Transparency Index, to highlight the huge differences in countries' coverage, management and usage of national pandemic data, raising troubling issues around public trust and data credibility, and why the World Health Organisation has not shown stronger leadership in this critical area.

The Covid Data Transparency Index (CDTI) ranks 100 countries on 30 different aspects of their Covid data, grouped into four key areas – transparency, coverage, usage and management – for a maximum score of 100 points. The research team at TotalAnalysis has been monitoring and extracting official Covid data from these countries and their local regions on a daily basis since the outbreak of the pandemic in March.

Only four countries (Belgium, Norway, USA and Chile) have scored above 70 per cent, the 5-star level at which TotalAnalysis argues that all countries should be nine months into the pandemic. At the other end of the scale sit North Korea and Turkmenistan in joint 99th position with a zero score, both countries being in "total Covid-denial" with not a single infection reported.

The UK scores just 53 per cent, the equivalent of three stars, and is ranked in 27th place, behind smaller countries such as Peru, Estonia and Guatemala.

Notable countries scoring less than 50 per cent and judged to be delivering unreliable data on infections, testing and deaths include Brazil in 48th place, Russia in 57th, India in 73rd and Turkey in 97th. But it is China, sitting just four off the bottom in 96th, that will command the greatest scrutiny, given the failings in communication between the PRC and the WHO at the outset of the pandemic and continuing criticism that the world's most populous country is failing to report accurate data. 

Mike Laflin, Director of Research at TotalAnalysis, said: "We've come across extraordinary variation in nations reporting and sharing Covid data and the index reveals the dire need for a coordinated global approach, rather than each country doing their own thing – and the majority doing it badly."

TotalAnalysis has also examined each country's official Covid numbers and compared them to both the regional and global averages to help assess each nation's "data credibility." The lower a country's ranking the greater the margin of under-reporting is likely to be.

Co-founder of TotalAnalysis, Richard Londesborough, said: "Data transparency is critical. Without public trust in government data you see a range of behaviours from cynicism and non-compliance to irrational fear, increased economic harm and collateral damage to non-Covid healthcare.

"It is difficult to overstate the dangers of all this misinformation and how governments choose to deploy it. The next generation of critical data will come with vaccinations; there's a clear need for a standardised approach to how each country reports the take-up, roll out, efficacy and side effects." 

Notes to Editor: 

The full index of 100 countries, together with each country's scores across the four data categories is available at https://totalanalysis.com/Covid19/TAIndex along with a report on the Index's findings. 

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For media enquiries and interviews, please contact:
Naomi Thomas, PR Manager, TotalAnalysis
[email protected] 
+44 (0)7917 184752

About Total Analysis

Based in London, TotalAnalysis is an independent information resource for data on the Coronavirus pandemic. With over 400,000 data points researched from more than 350 public sources, TotalAnalysis systematically updates and analyses Covid-19 data every day on over 200 nations and 2,200 local regions throughout Africa, the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East. TotalAnalysis was launched in April 2020 and is entirely independent of any government, institution or pressure group.

SOURCE TotalAnalysis

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