| America’s public-health agencies have a nightmarish data problem ahead as states attempt to reopen public life.
They’ll have to find, quarantine and trace the contacts of tens of thousands of people with Covid-19. They’ll have to keep track of whether exposed people get sick, and repeat the process if they do, hunting the virus down case-by-case.
This painstaking work is spread across hundreds of state and local health authorities who do it by hand. They make phone calls, send emails and keep records in Excel spreadsheets. To make this easier, researchers at the federally funded nonprofit Mitre Corp. built a tool called Sara Alert that some health agencies are using.
Sara Alert on an iPhone and iPad Pro
Source: Sara Alert
The software is free to health agencies and lets workers enroll people who need monitoring. Then it sends those people automated prompts by phone, email, or text to report their symptoms daily for two weeks. Those who show signs of illness, or who stop responding, get flagged for health workers to follow up with individually. Agencies can focus on the people at highest risk.
Paul Jarris, a public-health veteran and chief medical adviser at Mitre, led a team that raced to create Sara Alert as they watched the virus spread across the globe. “The concept here is quickly find the brush fire and extinguish the brush fire before you have a forest fire,” he told me.
America was blind to the early kindling of the coronavirus. New evidence shows a Covid-19 death in California on Feb. 6, weeks earlier than previously known.
The country’s response since has been hobbled by failures on the fundamentals: making enough tests that work and getting protective gear to health workers.
Monitoring and contact tracing are likewise core elements of the public-health response. Tools like Sara Alert may help the U.S. finally find its footing.—John Tozzi |