This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Infobox outbreak template. |
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Hello! Right now this appears to be somewhat virus-specific since it has a virus_strain parameter. Could we broaden it so that it could take pathogen_strain, or a separate virus vs bacteria vs parasite strain? This would allow us to use the template for lots of outbreaks, which would be nice. As it is, there isn't any very good outbreak template I could find. Thanks! Ajpolino ( talk) 06:17, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
The intended meaning of "arrival date" seems to be the date of the first confirmed/reported case. However, this is rarely the time when a disease actually entered a territory, which can happen (much) earlier. Could this be clarified? I have tried to find an official definition of "arrival date" but have come up empty. Renerpho ( talk) 22:51, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
first_confirmed
and let editors decide for each article?
Carl Fredrik
talk
11:39, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
While we're at it: Can anybody tell me how to use the website
parameter? I tried several ways but it remains blank. This template could benefit from some documentation!
Renerpho (
talk)
12:10, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request to
Template:Infobox epidemic has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Add Wikidata functionality to this template.
The idea is to allow the specification of a fetchwikidata
argument which is passed to
Module:WikidataIB, as is used in other Infobox templates.
This will look for properties of the current page outlined under disease outbreak (Q3241045) and fill the infobox using that data if not filled out already. Sigkell ( talk) 12:22, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
Can someone check this? The website parameter is not showing its value. - SUB WAY 22:40, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
@
CFCF: Thanks for your contributions. You
replaced parameter "Origin" with parameter "First outbreak". This might be confusing. "Origin" may refer to somewhere outside of the location of the outbreak (e.g., the origin of
2020 coronavirus pandemic in the United States was
Wuhan, a city outside of the U.S.), while "first outbreak" seems the same as "index case" (
formerly "first case") and refers to somewhere inside the location of the outbreak. If the location of the origin is inside the location of the outbreak, the infobox should only use origin
as the "location", and index_case
may be used as the "time" to replace arrival_date
(
the current infobox of
2019–20 coronavirus pandemic uses "Wuhan, Hubei, China" as both "first outbreak" and "index case", which appears redundant). I think that "origin" is a clearer term than "first outbreak", and suggest changing first_outbreak
back to origin
. --
Neo-Jay (
talk)
00:46, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
Origin
— while intuitively logical has been (intentionally?) misunderstood, where some have suggested that it is Unknown, and not Wuhan. "First outbreak" solves that confusion. Another alternative is to use Original outbreak
.first_outbreak
to original_outbreak
. --
Neo-Jay (
talk)
09:33, 26 March 2020 (UTC)The proper term for the first local case is index_case =
Boud.
Carl Fredrik
talk
16:20, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
first_outbreak
being a link such as
2019–20 coronavirus pandemic in Hubei rather than just the city name link? What's important is info about the outbreak happening in Wuhan, not so much info about the city itself.
Boud (
talk)
16:34, 5 April 2020 (UTC)![]() | This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Can someone add category for number of tests? Sredina ( talk) 16:07, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
{{
edit template-protected}}
template. –
Jonesey95 (
talk)
20:23, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
It seems that the official COVID-19 death toll of 2535 in Wuhan is underestimated by a factor of 10. See The Telegraph for an estimate of about 59000 COVID-19 deaths in Wuhan, also Time magazine.
I propose the parameter label and data entries:
| label22 = {{longitem|Unofficial deaths}}
| data22 = {{{unofficial_deaths|}}}
In Poland, there are already 2 unofficial COVID-19 deaths compared to 20 official ones (I may be out of date on the numbers), which makes a 9% underestimate, not a 96% underestimate as seems to be the case in Wuhan, but there are plenty of reports of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes in Italy, which are unofficial because the system is overwhelmed, rather than because of deliberate censorship. Boud ( talk) 13:39, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
confirmed_deaths
and suspected_deaths
. I am however a little hesitant, because it could still invite low quality sourcing. official_suspected_deaths
is also somewhat clunky.confirmed_deaths
and suspected_deaths
; just because a government ministry says that these are "confirmed" doesn't make that serious unless we have reliable, peer-reviewed evidence of that particular ministry (historically, and in terms of the present government) having a good record of providing confirmed data. In principle we should rate different ministries according to the peer-reviewed sources that judge the quality of those ministries' data, so strictly following the spirit of
WP:MEDRS would mean that we reject, at least, all statistics from China and Iran... Being more strict, we would probably reject the data from most of the infoboxes as violating MEDRS, since we probably don't have sources on the reliability of many (or any?) of the ministries.
Boud (
talk)
17:07, 29 March 2020 (UTC)unofficial deaths
as the name of the parameter. Many people will look at the name of the parameter, or how it appears in the infobox, and not read any explanation in the footnote or on the Template /doc page. So the risk of "unofficial deaths" being interpreted as "anything goes" is real. Putting references doesn't stop the more casual editors: they're happy to update values and ignore the references. Ideas such as reliably_sourced_unofficial_deaths
or independently_sourced_deaths
come to mind, but both are long and neither of them sound good.
Boud (
talk)
00:06, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
Boud — You point to several relevant problems here, including that there is concern of propaganda, even from sources where we ordinarily do not expect it. (Reliability of government estimates — A minor point is that some countries do not get their numbers from ministries, rather from government agencies. Sweden is a notable example where the agencies operate independent of the ministers and ministries.)
There is a good piece from the Financial Times:
The mystery of the true coronavirus death rate (it shouldn't be paywalled for now).
The point being that multiple factors are at play here: Many countries aren't testing at scale, some because they wish to artificially suppress numbers, but some simply because they lack tests or capacity. Not testing at full and simultaneously accepting deaths that aren't confirmed by test could artificially inflate the death rate, provoking fear.
I think it's therefor better to look at historical examples such as the
Black Death or
Spanish flu, which show death estimates as ranges. (There is also a rather odd situation now where confirmed_cases
reads "Confirmed cases: 500 million
(estimate)" at
Spanish flu.)
The reason I bring up the historical precedent is because it is very likely that the amount of people who died in COVID-19 will be subject to debate for a long time. As will the number of people who were infected, until reliable population surveys with antibody-serology are performed. Maybe best to split into 4:
official_cases
official_deaths
estimated_cases
estimated_deaths
But that is also imperfect, because in some cases you have official estimates which differ from the officially reported cases during the outbreak... It's a convoluted mess, it is… Carl Fredrik talk 09:32, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
ICD_10 =
parameter for the
ICD-10 code or codes? The U07.1 and U07.2 codes for COVID-19 are emergency codes, and in principle will be shifted to other codes later on, but the motivation is that this is intended for software to be able to easily manage the transition. Just as WHO and other medical agencies should be able to use software to shift to updated ICD-10 codes, Wikipedia will be able to too. A complication here is that lab-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection cases are for U07.1 (by definition of U07.1), while COVID-19 deaths are for both U07.1 and U07.2. So probably better would be: deaths_ICD_10 =
and confirmed_cases_ICD_10 =
separately. Any objections?
Boud (
talk)
15:15, 31 March 2020 (UTC)Could somebody look into this, because it just says "Official website" and the link below it is gone. KittenKlub ( talk) 05:56, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Maybe it will noticed like this. All the websites do not show anymore after yesterday's edit. I assume that data23=website should be changed to data24=website KittenKlub ( talk) 08:29, 12 April 2020 (UTC) KittenKlub ( talk) 08:29, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Please change
| header23 = {{#if:{{{website|}}}|Official website}}
| data23 = {{{website|}}}
to
| header23 = {{#if:{{{website|}}}|Official website}}
| data24 = {{{website|}}}
to correct the error in the last edit made today (see the preceding section). Best I can tell, "data"s for "header"s are incremented by 1, unlike those for "label"s. Thanks!
Usedtobecool
☎️
08:50, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
Hi. I think it would be good if someone could add an explanation in the documentation about the criteria for filling in the various hospital-related entries: severe_cases
, hospitalized_cases
, critical_cases
and ventilator_cases
. I guess the last one is about how many people are using a ventilator (by the way, very specific of the current COVID-19 outbreak, while this template – I guess – is meant to be more generic), but of course this number is also part of the other three. "Hospitalized" is also well-defined. However the most confusing difference is between severe and critical cases: what is the criterion to discern the two? --
Ritchie92 (
talk)
08:23, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
“Hospitalizations” is a count of all laboratory confirmed cases in which an inpatient hospitalization occurred at any time during the course of illness. These people may no longer be hospitalized. This number does not represent the number of COVID-19 positive persons currently hospitalized. We do not have a figure for that information at this time.(source has no independent URL, click any county here, then "click here" link at bottom of box that pops up) I wanted to add a footnote to the infobox explaining this resembling the "suspected cases" footnote in the inbfobox. I added a normal footnote, but users not familiar with Wikipedia may not notice the [a] footnote link as it blends in with the references. It may need to be a parameter that can be defined since this figure's definition may vary by U.S. state and this template is used globally and other countries may compile statistics differently. AHeneen ( talk) 03:51, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
Is it possible to use correct English spelling of 'Hospitalisation' as opposed to American 'Hospitalization'? Tried to use in my page and spelling seemed to break it ...causing it to not show in infobox 51.171.196.78 ( talk) 21:36, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
In Malaysia our Health Ministry released this data and before that I had put into suspected case, but @ Hulubalang2584: feels that it is not for that data. So I hope that a new parameter for this template. angys ( Talk Talk) 12:12, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
I think that the entry "official website" for a pandemic is not adequate. The official website is linked to the government response maybe, but not to the pandemic itself. Perhaps changing it to just "website" could be a good idea, since then it would apply to a government website, or another data website. I indeed agree with what Tartan357 wrote in their comment here. -- Ritchie92 ( talk) 10:51, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
Should these infoboxes contain the term “Official website,” if they are to contain a government website at all? — Tartan357 ( Talk) 11:19, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
@ MrX:@ Ritchie92:@ Fireman biff:@ Shanze1:@ Maranello10:@ Debresser:@ John Jones: To update everyone involved: it seems that the most popular solution right now is to remove the parameter, followed by renaming it. It seems, though, that much remains to be discussed. I think this comes down to what we’re trying to accomplish when building an encyclopedia. The primary argument against removal is that this information is “useful.” But infoboxes are for providing details inherent to a topic. The existence of a government response is not inherent to a disease outbreak. By including this in the infobox, I believe we are: 1) including unencyclopedic information and 2) using Wikipedia as a soapbox. Wikipedia is not a medical advice website or a host for public service announcements. Our goal is to document events. In this case, we are documenting the progression of a disease outbreak, and nothing more. That’s the crux of my argument - that its usefulness to people in responding to the disease is actually irrelevant. It simply isn’t a core component of the article’s subject. If we were talking about pages with titles like “Canadian government response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” then it would be a quality inherent to those articles’ subjects. But this is a template to be used on medical articles. Although unrelated to my concerns about the content being unencyclopedic, I think it’s also worth pointing out that we’re essentially endorsing government information unqualified (rather than using it as a reference for particular information), which, in the case of some countries, could be very unhelpful due to websites potentially containing propaganda. I think using such sites as references for particular information in an article is just fine, but we should be writing that information ourselves and citing it specifically. Wikipedia enables people everywhere to make decisions for themselves based on the most neutral presentation of the information available, and I think privileging single sources so heavily goes against that. — Tartan357 ( Talk) 06:53, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
@ MrX:@ Ritchie92:@ Fireman biff:@ Shanze1:@ Maranello10:@ Debresser:@ Soumya-8974:@ Usedtobecool: It seems there isn’t enough support to remove the parameter, but the consensus is that the “official website” phrasing is problematic. Two replacements have emerged: simply “website” or “government website.” “Government website” seems to have more support now, and I’m willing to support that, as well. I propose that we end this discussion with the consensus that “official website” should be replaced with “government website.” Are there any objections to that? — Tartan357 ( Talk) 06:38, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
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edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Please change the label for the website parameter from “Official website” to “Government website” per the above consensus (seven editors in favor, one opposing). Thank you. — Tartan357 ( Talk) 14:39, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
I would like to suggest adding and showing the total number of clinical tests conducted till date. In Wikidata there is a similar property available. So we can also fetch data from Wikidata.- ❙❚❚❙❙ JinOy ❚❙❚❙❙ ✉ 17:10, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
total_tested_cases
, for an alternative of suspected case]] section. As I said there, I am not sure if this is a useful parameter. @
Usedtobecool: also seems to have his reservations about this proposal.
Debresser (
talk)
00:12, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
a parameter field for the population would be helpful. As the template is used for worldwide outbreaks Spanish_flu and for smaller areas COVID-19_pandemic_in_Liechtenstein alike the reader is left alone with interpreting/scaling most numbers. (Well, all numbers except fatality_rate=, date=, arrival_date= and territories= ) -- HeWhoMowedTheLawn ( talk) 20:58, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Could we change the name for the "Arrival date" which is vague. It could either mean the date the index patient arrived on a certain area or the date the infection of the index patient was confirmed. I suggest changing it to "Arrival date" to "First case confirmed" Hariboneagle927 ( talk)
In Bhutan all positive cases are immediatly admitted to an isolation ward. After recovery or twice testing negative, they are not yet decalared recovered, but put into a further two weeks or more of "de-isolation" quarantine in a seperate facility, and then again tested twice more. Only after twice testing negative after this "de-isolation" period are they actually declared "recovered". I would like to request a paramater for cases in "de=isolation" - though there might be a better name for this. Thanks Chris Fynn ( talk) 11:19, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
Can a category named 'Tests' be added? This would be helpful to the reader in being able to determine a positive test rate just from the infobox. Qwerty325 ( talk) 22:14, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
The current background color for the name parameter is #FFCCCB, which is a light pink. I think that red/dark red would be more appropriate, since it conveys severity, and red is more closely associated with healthcare. CatcherStorm talk 05:08, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
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edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Someone please add the following fields: 1) Recovery Rate - Percentage of Patients Recovered 2) Samples Tested - Number of COVID-19 Tests carried out till date 103.238.106.77 ( talk) 13:17, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
{{
edit template-protected}}
template. –
Jonesey95 (
talk)
14:56, 10 August 2020 (UTC)![]() | This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Can someone here please adjust Template:Infobox outbreak (used, e.g., at COVID-19 pandemic) to 1) make ‘Suspected cases’ together with its double-dagger footnote optional and 2) add 'Infections' and ‘Suspected Infections’ as optional fields immediately before ‘Suspected cases’.
The rationale for this is, for COVID-19 per CNN, the WHO speaks in terms of ‘Infections’, not ‘Suspected cases’. This will be needed not only for COVID–19 but for any disease with largely non- and mildly asymptotic infecteds.
Given lack of clarity in sources to-date for COVID–19, per recent discussion 'Suspected infections' is requested in addition to 'Infections' (at least until sources clarify). Hence the request for both these optional fields. This is a well-warranted fix to prevent misperceptions.
Using the ‘Suspected cases’ field to indicate ‘Infections’ is very misleading. Thx, Humanengr ( talk) 05:28, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
I only feel strongly about the suspected part since the numbers are large-scale estimates.In my view, estimates are estimates and don't need the 'suspected' qualifier. @ MartinezMD, care to comment further? Humanengr ( talk) 02:31, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
I agree with PR that a clearer consensus on the exact change would be nice, before additional fields are added. Please reactivate when ready — Martin ( MSGJ · talk) 08:55, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
The last sentence of the infobox reads
An IP user has proposed here that it ought to read:
I support their proposal. Maproom ( talk) 20:59, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
Can someone please add the alternate spelling variation for "Hospitalized" as "Hospitalised" to the template, as is used in Australian and British English, in the same way we have this spelling option variant for Template:Infobox organization? Helper201 ( talk) 23:41, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
As vaccine rollout picks up pace worldwide would be nice to have a entry for "Vaccincated", "Vaccine doses administered", "% population vaccinated", "vaccines per 100k" or something like that to keep track of it for countries/regions going forward.
It's been four months since this was proposed by an user. COVID-19 vaccines are rolling out in many, many countries worldwide and it's quite strange that no template editor has replied or given a response to this proposal. Several users have already upvoted/supported this addition to the infobox. I want to know what's taking so long for a reply to this proposal.... Thank you. Edl-irishboy ( talk) 17:40, 24 April 2021 (UTC)
|vaccinations=
parameter which applies a plainlist
class, so you can copy-paste the list syntax in use e.g. at the Ireland article straight into |vaccinations=
without needing to apply the class manually.
User:GKFX
talk
20:34, 24 May 2021 (UTC)bodystyle has the wikitext
{{if|{{{width|}}}|width:{{{width}}}||}}
This is not valid for Template:if
Desb42 ( talk) 17:25, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
I think it should be
{{#if:{{{width|}}}|width:{{{width}}}}} (without the first pipe char) Desb42 ( talk) 07:40, 28 January 2021 (UTC)
For CoViD-19, excess deaths is now regularly being made available by several countries, and is often times several times more than the confirmed CoViD-19 deaths. (Please ping me if this is implemented.) -- Jeandré, 2021-04-23 t05:52z
Is it possible to add the organization/institution of the government? See for example institutions at Template:COVID-19 pandemic. SportsOlympic ( talk) 10:42, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
Hello. One of the important metrics is the test positivity rate. I propose adding it? Ear-phone ( talk) 22:19, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
It should probably say "first reported outbreak" because it's very hard to tell if it's really first. For HIV it was first reported in California and NY, but it had been in humans since the early 20th century, similar for Marburg, and even when it seems likely we can't be 100% sure. I can't find a page using it for HIV, but this is possibly because it doesn't fit well. Irtapil ( talk) 06:14, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
As there have been many regions and countries which have undergone numerous COVID-19 lockdown periods, it would be cool to have total number of days in lockdown as a metric. It makes it easier to compare the responses of different states/countries/regions. Neb ( talk) 13:54, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
I would like to suggest adding the Infobox outbreak template to the category "Category:Events infobox templates". -- HugoHelp ( talk) 21:32, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
"Fatality Rate" should either be updated to either reflect the current estimated Infection Fatality Rate or changed to say "Case Fatality Rate" or have both.
Fatality Rate in the dictionary is: "The number of deaths from a specific cause."
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fatality%20rate
CFR is not an accurate representation of Fatality Rate, as it only includes the reported cases, not the total number of cases (including estimates of unreported cases). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.181.127.183 ( talk) 05:44, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
I suggest we change the color at the top of the infobox. Baby pink is an immature color, and since it’s about medical stuff, I think blue or white is more appropriate. 2A02:A44C:6682:1:6068:A2F8:2224:118 ( talk) 00:19, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
Could the following changes please be made:
1 - drop the "‡Suspected cases have not been confirmed by laboratory tests as being due to this strain, although some other strains may have been ruled out." as this is not always relevant for non COVID-19 uses. 2 - For fungal disease outbreaks, I think we need a "Species" field.
I used this template at 2023 Mexico Meningitis outbreak, imperfectly. CT55555( talk) 23:43, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Infobox outbreak template. |
|
![]() | This template does not require a rating on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||
|
Hello! Right now this appears to be somewhat virus-specific since it has a virus_strain parameter. Could we broaden it so that it could take pathogen_strain, or a separate virus vs bacteria vs parasite strain? This would allow us to use the template for lots of outbreaks, which would be nice. As it is, there isn't any very good outbreak template I could find. Thanks! Ajpolino ( talk) 06:17, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
The intended meaning of "arrival date" seems to be the date of the first confirmed/reported case. However, this is rarely the time when a disease actually entered a territory, which can happen (much) earlier. Could this be clarified? I have tried to find an official definition of "arrival date" but have come up empty. Renerpho ( talk) 22:51, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
first_confirmed
and let editors decide for each article?
Carl Fredrik
talk
11:39, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
While we're at it: Can anybody tell me how to use the website
parameter? I tried several ways but it remains blank. This template could benefit from some documentation!
Renerpho (
talk)
12:10, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request to
Template:Infobox epidemic has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Add Wikidata functionality to this template.
The idea is to allow the specification of a fetchwikidata
argument which is passed to
Module:WikidataIB, as is used in other Infobox templates.
This will look for properties of the current page outlined under disease outbreak (Q3241045) and fill the infobox using that data if not filled out already. Sigkell ( talk) 12:22, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
Can someone check this? The website parameter is not showing its value. - SUB WAY 22:40, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
@
CFCF: Thanks for your contributions. You
replaced parameter "Origin" with parameter "First outbreak". This might be confusing. "Origin" may refer to somewhere outside of the location of the outbreak (e.g., the origin of
2020 coronavirus pandemic in the United States was
Wuhan, a city outside of the U.S.), while "first outbreak" seems the same as "index case" (
formerly "first case") and refers to somewhere inside the location of the outbreak. If the location of the origin is inside the location of the outbreak, the infobox should only use origin
as the "location", and index_case
may be used as the "time" to replace arrival_date
(
the current infobox of
2019–20 coronavirus pandemic uses "Wuhan, Hubei, China" as both "first outbreak" and "index case", which appears redundant). I think that "origin" is a clearer term than "first outbreak", and suggest changing first_outbreak
back to origin
. --
Neo-Jay (
talk)
00:46, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
Origin
— while intuitively logical has been (intentionally?) misunderstood, where some have suggested that it is Unknown, and not Wuhan. "First outbreak" solves that confusion. Another alternative is to use Original outbreak
.first_outbreak
to original_outbreak
. --
Neo-Jay (
talk)
09:33, 26 March 2020 (UTC)The proper term for the first local case is index_case =
Boud.
Carl Fredrik
talk
16:20, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
first_outbreak
being a link such as
2019–20 coronavirus pandemic in Hubei rather than just the city name link? What's important is info about the outbreak happening in Wuhan, not so much info about the city itself.
Boud (
talk)
16:34, 5 April 2020 (UTC)![]() | This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Can someone add category for number of tests? Sredina ( talk) 16:07, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
{{
edit template-protected}}
template. –
Jonesey95 (
talk)
20:23, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
It seems that the official COVID-19 death toll of 2535 in Wuhan is underestimated by a factor of 10. See The Telegraph for an estimate of about 59000 COVID-19 deaths in Wuhan, also Time magazine.
I propose the parameter label and data entries:
| label22 = {{longitem|Unofficial deaths}}
| data22 = {{{unofficial_deaths|}}}
In Poland, there are already 2 unofficial COVID-19 deaths compared to 20 official ones (I may be out of date on the numbers), which makes a 9% underestimate, not a 96% underestimate as seems to be the case in Wuhan, but there are plenty of reports of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes in Italy, which are unofficial because the system is overwhelmed, rather than because of deliberate censorship. Boud ( talk) 13:39, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
confirmed_deaths
and suspected_deaths
. I am however a little hesitant, because it could still invite low quality sourcing. official_suspected_deaths
is also somewhat clunky.confirmed_deaths
and suspected_deaths
; just because a government ministry says that these are "confirmed" doesn't make that serious unless we have reliable, peer-reviewed evidence of that particular ministry (historically, and in terms of the present government) having a good record of providing confirmed data. In principle we should rate different ministries according to the peer-reviewed sources that judge the quality of those ministries' data, so strictly following the spirit of
WP:MEDRS would mean that we reject, at least, all statistics from China and Iran... Being more strict, we would probably reject the data from most of the infoboxes as violating MEDRS, since we probably don't have sources on the reliability of many (or any?) of the ministries.
Boud (
talk)
17:07, 29 March 2020 (UTC)unofficial deaths
as the name of the parameter. Many people will look at the name of the parameter, or how it appears in the infobox, and not read any explanation in the footnote or on the Template /doc page. So the risk of "unofficial deaths" being interpreted as "anything goes" is real. Putting references doesn't stop the more casual editors: they're happy to update values and ignore the references. Ideas such as reliably_sourced_unofficial_deaths
or independently_sourced_deaths
come to mind, but both are long and neither of them sound good.
Boud (
talk)
00:06, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
Boud — You point to several relevant problems here, including that there is concern of propaganda, even from sources where we ordinarily do not expect it. (Reliability of government estimates — A minor point is that some countries do not get their numbers from ministries, rather from government agencies. Sweden is a notable example where the agencies operate independent of the ministers and ministries.)
There is a good piece from the Financial Times:
The mystery of the true coronavirus death rate (it shouldn't be paywalled for now).
The point being that multiple factors are at play here: Many countries aren't testing at scale, some because they wish to artificially suppress numbers, but some simply because they lack tests or capacity. Not testing at full and simultaneously accepting deaths that aren't confirmed by test could artificially inflate the death rate, provoking fear.
I think it's therefor better to look at historical examples such as the
Black Death or
Spanish flu, which show death estimates as ranges. (There is also a rather odd situation now where confirmed_cases
reads "Confirmed cases: 500 million
(estimate)" at
Spanish flu.)
The reason I bring up the historical precedent is because it is very likely that the amount of people who died in COVID-19 will be subject to debate for a long time. As will the number of people who were infected, until reliable population surveys with antibody-serology are performed. Maybe best to split into 4:
official_cases
official_deaths
estimated_cases
estimated_deaths
But that is also imperfect, because in some cases you have official estimates which differ from the officially reported cases during the outbreak... It's a convoluted mess, it is… Carl Fredrik talk 09:32, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
ICD_10 =
parameter for the
ICD-10 code or codes? The U07.1 and U07.2 codes for COVID-19 are emergency codes, and in principle will be shifted to other codes later on, but the motivation is that this is intended for software to be able to easily manage the transition. Just as WHO and other medical agencies should be able to use software to shift to updated ICD-10 codes, Wikipedia will be able to too. A complication here is that lab-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection cases are for U07.1 (by definition of U07.1), while COVID-19 deaths are for both U07.1 and U07.2. So probably better would be: deaths_ICD_10 =
and confirmed_cases_ICD_10 =
separately. Any objections?
Boud (
talk)
15:15, 31 March 2020 (UTC)Could somebody look into this, because it just says "Official website" and the link below it is gone. KittenKlub ( talk) 05:56, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
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Maybe it will noticed like this. All the websites do not show anymore after yesterday's edit. I assume that data23=website should be changed to data24=website KittenKlub ( talk) 08:29, 12 April 2020 (UTC) KittenKlub ( talk) 08:29, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
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Please change
| header23 = {{#if:{{{website|}}}|Official website}}
| data23 = {{{website|}}}
to
| header23 = {{#if:{{{website|}}}|Official website}}
| data24 = {{{website|}}}
to correct the error in the last edit made today (see the preceding section). Best I can tell, "data"s for "header"s are incremented by 1, unlike those for "label"s. Thanks!
Usedtobecool
☎️
08:50, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
Hi. I think it would be good if someone could add an explanation in the documentation about the criteria for filling in the various hospital-related entries: severe_cases
, hospitalized_cases
, critical_cases
and ventilator_cases
. I guess the last one is about how many people are using a ventilator (by the way, very specific of the current COVID-19 outbreak, while this template – I guess – is meant to be more generic), but of course this number is also part of the other three. "Hospitalized" is also well-defined. However the most confusing difference is between severe and critical cases: what is the criterion to discern the two? --
Ritchie92 (
talk)
08:23, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
“Hospitalizations” is a count of all laboratory confirmed cases in which an inpatient hospitalization occurred at any time during the course of illness. These people may no longer be hospitalized. This number does not represent the number of COVID-19 positive persons currently hospitalized. We do not have a figure for that information at this time.(source has no independent URL, click any county here, then "click here" link at bottom of box that pops up) I wanted to add a footnote to the infobox explaining this resembling the "suspected cases" footnote in the inbfobox. I added a normal footnote, but users not familiar with Wikipedia may not notice the [a] footnote link as it blends in with the references. It may need to be a parameter that can be defined since this figure's definition may vary by U.S. state and this template is used globally and other countries may compile statistics differently. AHeneen ( talk) 03:51, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
Is it possible to use correct English spelling of 'Hospitalisation' as opposed to American 'Hospitalization'? Tried to use in my page and spelling seemed to break it ...causing it to not show in infobox 51.171.196.78 ( talk) 21:36, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
In Malaysia our Health Ministry released this data and before that I had put into suspected case, but @ Hulubalang2584: feels that it is not for that data. So I hope that a new parameter for this template. angys ( Talk Talk) 12:12, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
I think that the entry "official website" for a pandemic is not adequate. The official website is linked to the government response maybe, but not to the pandemic itself. Perhaps changing it to just "website" could be a good idea, since then it would apply to a government website, or another data website. I indeed agree with what Tartan357 wrote in their comment here. -- Ritchie92 ( talk) 10:51, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
Should these infoboxes contain the term “Official website,” if they are to contain a government website at all? — Tartan357 ( Talk) 11:19, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
@ MrX:@ Ritchie92:@ Fireman biff:@ Shanze1:@ Maranello10:@ Debresser:@ John Jones: To update everyone involved: it seems that the most popular solution right now is to remove the parameter, followed by renaming it. It seems, though, that much remains to be discussed. I think this comes down to what we’re trying to accomplish when building an encyclopedia. The primary argument against removal is that this information is “useful.” But infoboxes are for providing details inherent to a topic. The existence of a government response is not inherent to a disease outbreak. By including this in the infobox, I believe we are: 1) including unencyclopedic information and 2) using Wikipedia as a soapbox. Wikipedia is not a medical advice website or a host for public service announcements. Our goal is to document events. In this case, we are documenting the progression of a disease outbreak, and nothing more. That’s the crux of my argument - that its usefulness to people in responding to the disease is actually irrelevant. It simply isn’t a core component of the article’s subject. If we were talking about pages with titles like “Canadian government response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” then it would be a quality inherent to those articles’ subjects. But this is a template to be used on medical articles. Although unrelated to my concerns about the content being unencyclopedic, I think it’s also worth pointing out that we’re essentially endorsing government information unqualified (rather than using it as a reference for particular information), which, in the case of some countries, could be very unhelpful due to websites potentially containing propaganda. I think using such sites as references for particular information in an article is just fine, but we should be writing that information ourselves and citing it specifically. Wikipedia enables people everywhere to make decisions for themselves based on the most neutral presentation of the information available, and I think privileging single sources so heavily goes against that. — Tartan357 ( Talk) 06:53, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
@ MrX:@ Ritchie92:@ Fireman biff:@ Shanze1:@ Maranello10:@ Debresser:@ Soumya-8974:@ Usedtobecool: It seems there isn’t enough support to remove the parameter, but the consensus is that the “official website” phrasing is problematic. Two replacements have emerged: simply “website” or “government website.” “Government website” seems to have more support now, and I’m willing to support that, as well. I propose that we end this discussion with the consensus that “official website” should be replaced with “government website.” Are there any objections to that? — Tartan357 ( Talk) 06:38, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
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Please change the label for the website parameter from “Official website” to “Government website” per the above consensus (seven editors in favor, one opposing). Thank you. — Tartan357 ( Talk) 14:39, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
I would like to suggest adding and showing the total number of clinical tests conducted till date. In Wikidata there is a similar property available. So we can also fetch data from Wikidata.- ❙❚❚❙❙ JinOy ❚❙❚❙❙ ✉ 17:10, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
total_tested_cases
, for an alternative of suspected case]] section. As I said there, I am not sure if this is a useful parameter. @
Usedtobecool: also seems to have his reservations about this proposal.
Debresser (
talk)
00:12, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
a parameter field for the population would be helpful. As the template is used for worldwide outbreaks Spanish_flu and for smaller areas COVID-19_pandemic_in_Liechtenstein alike the reader is left alone with interpreting/scaling most numbers. (Well, all numbers except fatality_rate=, date=, arrival_date= and territories= ) -- HeWhoMowedTheLawn ( talk) 20:58, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Could we change the name for the "Arrival date" which is vague. It could either mean the date the index patient arrived on a certain area or the date the infection of the index patient was confirmed. I suggest changing it to "Arrival date" to "First case confirmed" Hariboneagle927 ( talk)
In Bhutan all positive cases are immediatly admitted to an isolation ward. After recovery or twice testing negative, they are not yet decalared recovered, but put into a further two weeks or more of "de-isolation" quarantine in a seperate facility, and then again tested twice more. Only after twice testing negative after this "de-isolation" period are they actually declared "recovered". I would like to request a paramater for cases in "de=isolation" - though there might be a better name for this. Thanks Chris Fynn ( talk) 11:19, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
Can a category named 'Tests' be added? This would be helpful to the reader in being able to determine a positive test rate just from the infobox. Qwerty325 ( talk) 22:14, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
The current background color for the name parameter is #FFCCCB, which is a light pink. I think that red/dark red would be more appropriate, since it conveys severity, and red is more closely associated with healthcare. CatcherStorm talk 05:08, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
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Someone please add the following fields: 1) Recovery Rate - Percentage of Patients Recovered 2) Samples Tested - Number of COVID-19 Tests carried out till date 103.238.106.77 ( talk) 13:17, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
{{
edit template-protected}}
template. –
Jonesey95 (
talk)
14:56, 10 August 2020 (UTC)![]() | This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Can someone here please adjust Template:Infobox outbreak (used, e.g., at COVID-19 pandemic) to 1) make ‘Suspected cases’ together with its double-dagger footnote optional and 2) add 'Infections' and ‘Suspected Infections’ as optional fields immediately before ‘Suspected cases’.
The rationale for this is, for COVID-19 per CNN, the WHO speaks in terms of ‘Infections’, not ‘Suspected cases’. This will be needed not only for COVID–19 but for any disease with largely non- and mildly asymptotic infecteds.
Given lack of clarity in sources to-date for COVID–19, per recent discussion 'Suspected infections' is requested in addition to 'Infections' (at least until sources clarify). Hence the request for both these optional fields. This is a well-warranted fix to prevent misperceptions.
Using the ‘Suspected cases’ field to indicate ‘Infections’ is very misleading. Thx, Humanengr ( talk) 05:28, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
I only feel strongly about the suspected part since the numbers are large-scale estimates.In my view, estimates are estimates and don't need the 'suspected' qualifier. @ MartinezMD, care to comment further? Humanengr ( talk) 02:31, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
I agree with PR that a clearer consensus on the exact change would be nice, before additional fields are added. Please reactivate when ready — Martin ( MSGJ · talk) 08:55, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
The last sentence of the infobox reads
An IP user has proposed here that it ought to read:
I support their proposal. Maproom ( talk) 20:59, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
Can someone please add the alternate spelling variation for "Hospitalized" as "Hospitalised" to the template, as is used in Australian and British English, in the same way we have this spelling option variant for Template:Infobox organization? Helper201 ( talk) 23:41, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
As vaccine rollout picks up pace worldwide would be nice to have a entry for "Vaccincated", "Vaccine doses administered", "% population vaccinated", "vaccines per 100k" or something like that to keep track of it for countries/regions going forward.
It's been four months since this was proposed by an user. COVID-19 vaccines are rolling out in many, many countries worldwide and it's quite strange that no template editor has replied or given a response to this proposal. Several users have already upvoted/supported this addition to the infobox. I want to know what's taking so long for a reply to this proposal.... Thank you. Edl-irishboy ( talk) 17:40, 24 April 2021 (UTC)
|vaccinations=
parameter which applies a plainlist
class, so you can copy-paste the list syntax in use e.g. at the Ireland article straight into |vaccinations=
without needing to apply the class manually.
User:GKFX
talk
20:34, 24 May 2021 (UTC)bodystyle has the wikitext
{{if|{{{width|}}}|width:{{{width}}}||}}
This is not valid for Template:if
Desb42 ( talk) 17:25, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
I think it should be
{{#if:{{{width|}}}|width:{{{width}}}}} (without the first pipe char) Desb42 ( talk) 07:40, 28 January 2021 (UTC)
For CoViD-19, excess deaths is now regularly being made available by several countries, and is often times several times more than the confirmed CoViD-19 deaths. (Please ping me if this is implemented.) -- Jeandré, 2021-04-23 t05:52z
Is it possible to add the organization/institution of the government? See for example institutions at Template:COVID-19 pandemic. SportsOlympic ( talk) 10:42, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
Hello. One of the important metrics is the test positivity rate. I propose adding it? Ear-phone ( talk) 22:19, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
It should probably say "first reported outbreak" because it's very hard to tell if it's really first. For HIV it was first reported in California and NY, but it had been in humans since the early 20th century, similar for Marburg, and even when it seems likely we can't be 100% sure. I can't find a page using it for HIV, but this is possibly because it doesn't fit well. Irtapil ( talk) 06:14, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
As there have been many regions and countries which have undergone numerous COVID-19 lockdown periods, it would be cool to have total number of days in lockdown as a metric. It makes it easier to compare the responses of different states/countries/regions. Neb ( talk) 13:54, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
I would like to suggest adding the Infobox outbreak template to the category "Category:Events infobox templates". -- HugoHelp ( talk) 21:32, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
"Fatality Rate" should either be updated to either reflect the current estimated Infection Fatality Rate or changed to say "Case Fatality Rate" or have both.
Fatality Rate in the dictionary is: "The number of deaths from a specific cause."
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fatality%20rate
CFR is not an accurate representation of Fatality Rate, as it only includes the reported cases, not the total number of cases (including estimates of unreported cases). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.181.127.183 ( talk) 05:44, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
I suggest we change the color at the top of the infobox. Baby pink is an immature color, and since it’s about medical stuff, I think blue or white is more appropriate. 2A02:A44C:6682:1:6068:A2F8:2224:118 ( talk) 00:19, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
Could the following changes please be made:
1 - drop the "‡Suspected cases have not been confirmed by laboratory tests as being due to this strain, although some other strains may have been ruled out." as this is not always relevant for non COVID-19 uses. 2 - For fungal disease outbreaks, I think we need a "Species" field.
I used this template at 2023 Mexico Meningitis outbreak, imperfectly. CT55555( talk) 23:43, 13 June 2023 (UTC)