Editorial: Public Health Data Challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic: A Sisyphean task!

Abstract

In December 2019, a cluster of pneumonia cases was reported in Wuhan, China. Eventually it was identified, and the genetic sequence was thereafter disseminated, confirming a novel coronavirus infecting humans. Within just a few weeks, its rapid spread took on pandemic proportions, affecting people's lives and daily routines. As of May 2022, the COVID-19 pandemic is still raging on, posing challenges worldwide.From its beginning, this pandemic has brought unexpected changes to health care systems and new challenges for public health, health monitoring, and health surveillance, namely in terms of the necessary data for clinical decisions, resource management, and policymaking. Moreover, health care systems had to maintain their non-COVID-19 activity while simultaneously the unrelenting impact of this new disease.The scientific world, too, was taken by a hurricane, and witnessed an impressive number of COVID-19-related publications in record time. As of the end of April 2022, PubMed, one of the most well-known databases containing biomedical scientific literature, retrieved more than 255,000 citations with "COVID-19" as the search term. Of those, 72,587 records also included a reference to "data, " revealing a large body of literature that likely involved the use of data to study COVID-19.Projects like the Population Health Information Research Infrastructure (1) are, we believe, currently conducting literature reviews to better understand the uses, the pathways, and the needs of population health data in these pandemic times. It will take years, or even decades, to understand exactly what happened and what lessons we must assimilate to prepare for similar health crises and take with us into our new day-to-day.The primary aim of our Research Topic Public Health Data Challenges of the COVID-19 Pandemic was to focus on public health data in the contexts of worrying data deficits, emergent problems, and innovative solutions originating from the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Nevertheless, it was the secondary aim-a