By Charly SHELTON

COVID-19 cases are prevalent around the world whether on the rise in South Korea, on the decline in Switzerland or holding relatively steady in America. It is important that this data is tracked to see when it is safe for communities to reopen and when to shut down tighter. There have been few applications for predictive algorithms to tell where there will be a resurgence of the virus. Glendale resident Vahag Karayan and his business partner Gugo Martikyan are working to change that.

“I’m a crazy data guy, so I made my own spreadsheet tracking all the cases around the world – where [COVID-19 cases were] peaking, where they were not, [and then adding] my own analysis. I was actually posting it on Twitter and Facebook,” Karayan said. “One of the things that was missing was that all the data was lacking indicators. What happens is you get cases of people who have made it into the hospital; they are already sick. Is there any way to know where there’s going to be an increase or decrease [in cases]? Or is there any way to have data that you could actually predict certain things ahead of time, where you know your hospital beds are not overwhelmed because you already knew a lot of people are likely to be coming from [a given] zip code or this locality?”

Their company, InfoGears, has gone live online as a free resource to the public and official organizations. The website, InfoGears.org (https://infogears.org/) allows visitors to enter their zip code and register their symptoms, or lack thereof, as well as their mental health level as related to the impact of the virus. This data will be added to the crowd-sourced data pool. It is plotted onto a map by zip code and an assessment is made as to the level of risk in that area. This is not a medical diagnosis and the site still advocates visitors follow all recommended safety procedures including wearing face coverings, maintaining social distancing and staying home unless absolutely necessary. But having the peace of mind of knowing of a low-risk area assessment or the foreknowledge of a high possibility of resurgence in an area can make a difference.

As of yesterday, the data for the 91214 zip code shows that of individuals who self-reported their data on the site, 4.95% were experiencing two or more symptoms, 63% left home more than once a day, and 79.7% have had “some to significant” mental health impact from the pandemic.

This data is based on the 202 respondents from the zip code whose population is 30,654. That works out to 0.006% of the total population of the area. With each visitor who responds, the data pool grows and the results become more indicative of the whole. Karayan encourages residents of any zip code to visit the site once a day and log their symptoms, their mental health effects and their daily travel habits to add more data points to make this system as accurate as possible.

Visit InfoGears.org to log symptoms or the lack thereof and see the data for a specific area. And encourage friends, family and neighbors to do the same so the data pool can grow and become even more accurate.

  Charly Shelton