Policy

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Public Health Surveillance: Immunity, Testing, and Contact Tracing

Q&A with Abram Wagner

Long before we could sequence a virus’s genome in a matter of weeks, we used public health tactics like contact tracing to sort out the movement of a disease in a population. Contact tracing is one of the “traditional” tools of epidemiologists. Today, we have more public health surveillance tools at our disposal, and we’ll need both the old and the new to bring COVID-19 under control.

Hotspot map of the world with Coronavirus cases.

Digesting the Data: Tips for Understanding and Acting on the Coronavirus Numbers

Q&A with Neil K. Mehta

Humans produce a lot of data, and it seems the current epidemic crisis has accelerated our production of and engagement with numbers, graphs, and maps. But we can learn a lot from all the statistics, especially if we know how to digest and interpret it all. Demography expert Neil Mehta shares his thoughts on how to follow and understand the coronavirus outbreak in a meaningful way.

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Social Distancing: Data Models for a Model Response to an Outbreak

Q&A with Peter Song

Biostatistics expert Peter Song and team have created a tool to assess the effectiveness of preventive measures in the fight against the COVID-19, still a new disease with many unknowns. The model lets us compare the impact of different levels of intervention so different locales can develop better strategies and policies to flatten the coronavirus curve.

An empty sports arena and lone red seat

Mass Cancellations, Slowing the Spread, and Flattening the Curve

Q&A with Laura Power

Cultural institutions and programs are shutting down to mitigate the spread of coronavirus. To better understand what it means to “flatten the curve,” we asked Dr. Laura Power, director of the Preventive Medicine Residency at the School of Public Health, for some perspectives from the field of public health.