Denver, Colorado (United States) – February 29, 2020 (travelindex.com) – As fears surrounding spread of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) escalate, government agencies and the medical community are cautioning that one of the biggest dangers to the general population is panic.
With misinformation and speculation rampant around predicted risks, particularly to travelers, it can be difficult to make informed travel decisions and for organizations to fully understand their exposure from global operations.
GeoSure’s data driven approach to Health & Medical safety ratings provide valuable insights for travelers, business travel managers and corporate stakeholders based on advanced predictive modeling, crowdsourced insights and sentiment analysis. GeoSure has been forecasting the potential impact of coronavirus on travelers since first reports of infection in late December 2019 in Wuhan, China.
In mid-January 2020, while the Chinese government was initially reporting a figure of less than 10,000 infected patients, GeoSure signals indicated the actual number of cases to much higher, likely between 70,000 and 90,000 in the weeks to follow — which today we know to be the case.
The GeoSure risk ratings platform, operating at a 95 percent confidence interval, realized and displayed these dynamic rates of change for the benefit of millions of travelers weeks before the updated governmental statistics incited the current state of anxiety in the markets.
Key takeaways for travelers:
– We did not and still don’t view coronavirus as a “fast rise time, fast decay time” event, but more persistent
– We expect sustained impact, including within the United States, albeit with moderated effects due to better testing and response
– Health & Medical risk ratings will ultimately decrease reflective of available data, including government actions such as quarantine and travel bans, introduction of pharma response such as vaccines, as well as changing patient population statistics from apolitical, reliable sources
– Hyper-local, personalized understanding of health safety conditions, along with traveler participation in a safe traveler community built on trust, is the only way to overcome institutional roadblocks, stay safer, more informed and enjoy the travel experience while fully equipped
The democratization of safety awareness is catalyzing profound benefits, and GeoSure is just getting started. Some of the offerings on tap include: dynamic rate of change alerts, time series displays, alternate (safety level vs. risk) score scaling options, hyper-local contextual insights, and a revolutionary mobile app safety experience.
About GeoSure
GeoSure is the worldwide leader in scaled, location safety assessment. The company leverages proprietary technology, machine learning, predictive analytics, and AI to calculate location-specific safety ratings represented as GeoSafeScoresTM—a simple, standardized rating that gauges the relative safety of traveling personnel or at-risk real assets anywhere in the world. GeoSure generates safety ratings for more than 30,000 locations worldwide, with locations and data growing daily. GeoSure mobile is available free for both iPhone and Android, and data is available to organizations via API or web app integrations.
