Cory Bergman
Factal has been covering the coronavirus outbreak since our first report on Dec. 31st CST, publishing thousands of verified updates spanning dozens of countries. We’re offering free access to our breaking news platform to both NGOs as well as fact-checkers working on the COVID-19 outbreak.
World Central Kitchen is one of more than 30 non-profits relying on Factal’s coverage, a program we started last fall. Soon after California officials announced the Grand Princess cruise ship would dock in Oakland, volunteers descended on the port and geared up to prepare thousands of meals for quarantined passengers.
“We are experts at rapidly setting up kitchens and establishing safe logistics processes to get food to where it needs to go,” explained World Central Kitchen’s CEO Nate Mook. “Whether in the middle of a hurricane in The Bahamas, cholera outbreak in Mozambique, after an earthquake in Puerto Rico, or in this case, a viral epidemic.”
Beyond new COVID-19 cases, Factal has been covering travel restrictions, quarantines, business and school closures, local health care responses and supply chain impacts.
“[Factal] has been an incredible resource during this response,” said Dr. Nicolette Louissaint of HealthCare Ready, a nonprofit focused on sustaining health care supply chains during the outbreak. “Their dedication to providing accurate information – and quickly – has elevated our emergency response capacity.”
Another Factal member, DirectRelief has quickly shifted from sending N95 masks from the Australian wildfires to “areas where health workers are at extreme risk of exposure” of the virus, said DirectRelief’s Tony Morain.
Meanwhile, fact-checkers are contending with an “infodemic” of misinformation, and Factal has teamed up with Poynter’s International Fact Checking Network (IFCN) to provide free access to its members.
“[IFCN] has initiated the largest ever collaboration among fact-checkers to address the misinformation around the novel coronavirus,” explains Baybars Orsek, director of the network. “So far more than 100 fact-checkers have published almost a thousand fact checks working around the clock.”
Factal is a news-technology company founded on a public service mission to protect people from imminent harm and help those in immediate need. If you work at an NGO or fact-checking organization and would like free access, please email me at cory@factal.com. Follow @Factal on Twitter for major breaking news updates.
(Top photo from World Central Kitchen)
(We’ve corrected this story to update the local date and time zone of our first Wuhan update to Dec 31st China Standard Time.)