The Need for Reliable and Timely Data to Contrast COVID-19: What Went Wrong?

In this article, we aim to stress that the fight of COVID-19 needs clear and timely data collection plans. Without data to support decisions, we can only hope for a fortunate guess. We need synergies between different research communities, policy-makers, Official Statistics, health institutions, and private companies which may provide non-conventional source of data. After having discussed policies and data collection initiatives in several European countries, we argue that on the one hand policy decisions are often not driven by the data. On the other hand, data collection either does not occur in a timely manner or it does not enable researchers to generalise the sample results to the entire population.