"As the world fights COVID-19 and countries develop plans to reopen their societies, it's critical to have a clear understanding of how the disease is spreading," Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page and in the Washington Post.
"With a community of billions of people globally, Facebook can uniquely help researchers and health authorities get the information they need to respond to the outbreak and start planning for the recovery."
Carnegie Mellon researchers said they are receiving about one million responses per week from Facebook users, and have also gotten some 600,000 from Google users.
"Using these and other unique data sources, the CMU researchers will monitor changes over time, enabling them to forecast COVID-19 activity several weeks into the future," the research team said.
The research uses responses to Facebook surveys about symptoms people are experiences, with data controlled by university team and not shared with the social network.