Scientists from all over the globe are racing to find a vaccine for Covid-19. Among the types of scientists playing a massive role are biochemists, microbiologists, scientists specializing in infectious diseases; and now data scientists.

Poet Maya Angelou once said, “if you don’t like something, change it…” and that’s exactly what data scientist Rebekah Jones did. Dissatisfied with the way the Department of Health in the state of Florida was reporting Covid-19 statistics - Jones created her own dashboard to accurately depict infection and death rates in her state.

As the world turns to data to solve some of the world’s most perplexing problems – data science has been thrust into the spotlight. Data is manipulated, shifted, and placed into different combinations that produce results, theories, and predictions. In the past, data has been challenged and criticized for the benefit of science to guarantee that the calculations and statistics are correct.  But as governments are heightened amid Covid-19 and governments are anxious to restart the economy – data scientists in the United States are under pressure to produce positive results that show declining infection rates – even if it’s not accurate.

As the world grapples to understand what COVID-19 is and finding vaccines that will work, researchers have already created more than 50,000 articles that have information about the coronavirus. That is a massive amount of information that can be too overwhelming to make sense from. Some companies are now coming up with ways of enabling researchers to search through the web and process information fast for use in research.