The transmission features of the COVID-19 epidemic have still not been properly recognized in the sense of global environmental changes. Likewise, the pace of global development, increased population size, nuanced encounters, and lack of medical security in developing countries all contribute to the complexities of COVID-19 prevention and regulation. The COVID-19 seems to have a greater impact on the global economy when compared to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) that occurs in 2013. The bone of contention is how to fight the spread of these infectious diseases and how to contains it spread from human-to-human. Most countries depended on the observation of classic steps to monitor diseases and public health to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, similar to those used with SARS in 2003. Data in the healthcare sector are usually huge and not easy to handle, this results from the enormous way by which data grows in the healthcare sector, the rate at which data are been produced, and the variety of various data in the healthcare system contributed to this growth. Also, the rate at which these data are been captured, stored, analyzed, and retrieved in healthcare has swiftly from the aged paper-based storage technique to the use of digital techniques and methods. Hence, the application of advanced technologies which includes virtualization and cloud computing allows for huge and effective data processing in the healthcare system. Thereby rapidly turning the healthcare system into a big data industry. Nevertheless, in these modern days, the improvement in the information and communication technologies (ICT) brings the advancement of varied data from new sources in the healthcare system. Therefore, this chapter discusses the possible application of big data and analytics to improve conventional public health approaches to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic to control, manage, identify and avoid COVID-19 and reduce the effect on health implicitly associated with COVID-19. The significant applications of big data and challenges are presented. Leveraging big data and intelligent analytics becomes expedient in other to enjoy their use for COVID-19 disease outbreak and public health. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
Big Data and Data Analytics for an Enhanced COVID-19 Epidemic Management