The Ministry of Solidarity and Health (through Santé publique France) is publishing several COVID-19 related datasets on the national open data portal: 1) Daily hospital data by department and sex of the patient: number of hospitalized patients, number of people currently in intensive care, cumulative number of people who returned home, cumulative number of deceased people. 2) Daily data relating to hospitals by department: cumulative number of services having declared at least one case. 3) Daily data from SOS médecins and hospital emergencies by department, sex and age group of the patient: number of emergency visits for suspected COVID-19, total number of emergency visits, number of hospitalizations among emergency visits for suspected COVID-19, total number of SOS mécecins interventions for suspected COVID-19. The process of collecting data is not yet finished: hospitals, home retirement, doctors, emergency center call, etc - all of these organisations produce data related to the epidemic.

The initiative meets the need for citizens to be informed in real time about the Covid-19 situation, as well as in providing better and quick access to data for journalists and researchers and the public administration. The need for transparency and trust with regards to government communication is met by publishing data that allows the situation to be objectified. Open data is a great tool to monitor the situation and make informed decisions

The administration in charge of monitoring and understanding the dynamics of the epidemic is the Ministry of Solidarity and Health through the National Public Health agency: “Santé publique France” (SPF). Santé publique France is today the main public institution that publishes data on data.gouv.fr. However, other public institutions are also publishing data related to the epidemic: information are made available during the DGS (Health Department within the Ministry of Health) daily press briefi