Turkish data scientists have launched an online portal to document the emotional impact the coronavirus pandemic is having on people.
The platform, coronaletters.com, allows visitors to write notes detailing how they are feeling during self-isolation or quarantine.
Web developer Selçuk Demirbaş told Anadolu Agency that the website will create an emotional map linking the letters and demographics of contributors.
Co-founder of the site, Ahmet Faruk Tuna, holds a doctorate in corporate innovation.
Stating that the world is going through extraordinary times, Demirbaş said the portal had the potential to serve as a reference point for future policymaking.
"This period will be remembered in terms of the impact it had on the economic, social, health sectors. But we also thought that this should be evaluated in terms of emotions. What do people think and feel in these times? We wanted to create such content in order to understand this situation better," he said. It is an open-source portal and anyone can make a contribution.
"What we expect from our users is to state on our site their lives, feelings and thoughts on the pandemic and especially during self-isolation," he added.
Millions of people are confined to their homes across the world as governments have locked down entire cities to stem the spread of the novel virus, which has so far infected more than 1.4 million people globally.
The death toll has crossed 82,130 as scientists grapple to find a vaccine for COVID-19, the disease which first emerged in Wuhan, China last December.
Until then, the only way to prevent further deaths is social distancing, a move that has changed how education is being imparted and workplaces are being run.
The emotional impact of being locked up indoors for months at a stretch must be far-reaching, but this data will have to wait while policymakers tend to more pressing matters at hand: stopping the fatalities.
