Q: I heard that the FDA approved several new rapid home test for diagnosis of COVID-19. Are the rapid tests just as good as the others? Can I take this one before I visit family? A: TL; DR: No, rapid tests are not quite as good at picking up positives (someone who really has COVID-19) …
We talked to someone who has been working as a state contact tracer since May. She gave us a list of practical things you can do today to make contact tracers’ jobs easier: 1️⃣ Clear out your voicemail so they can leave a message! 📪 2️⃣ Make sure you have a thermometer at home. 🌡️ …
A: As noted in prior posts, highly trained dogs have the incredible capacity to successfully detect the odor of people with COVID-19 by sniffing human sweat. Pilot programs using COVID-sniffing dogs to detect infection among potential passengers have already launched in airports in Finland, the United Arab Emirates, and most recently Chile. These pilot projects …
A: TL, DR: The weekly pattern of fewer COVID-19 cases and deaths on the weekends is primarily due to differences in testing timing and reporting delays, but some of the pattern may be due to increased weekend socializing. Based on publicly available data, there is a widely observed ‘weekend effect’ with fewer COVID-19 cases and …
A: The guidelines represent a “most bang for your buck” approach to preventing transmission of COVID-19 at the population level–but quarantining for 14 days is still the recommended and safest approach. While our scientific understanding of how long it takes to develop COVID-19 symptoms after being exposed (science term: incubation period) still says up to …
A: Your “bubble” might be far bigger than you think. To figure out exactly how big and who you might be sharing germs with, think like a contact tracer and sketch out your contact network. 🖧 If you need to pull out a piece of paper to figure this out, that’s a whole lot of …
A: Testing samples of wastewater and pooled spit in places with communal living, such as colleges and universities, provide several valuable benefits in detecting COVID-19. TESTING OF ASYMPTOMATIC PEOPLE. When people are living and socializing together in the same building, there is a risk of asymptomatic spread. If you wait until people are symptomatic to …
A: Retreat organizers relied primarily on a test-based strategy for preventing individuals with COVID-19 from attending the retreat and didn’t employ other measures to prevent transmission of COVID-19 among attendees. This did not work. Consequently, a single attendee who became ill the day after arriving led to 116 other attendees (76% of attendees) becoming a …
A: In the community setting, someone who meets the criteria for being a close contact to a case of COVID-19, meets the criteria REGARDLESS of whether or not they or the case had on a mask. Why is someone considered a close contact regardless of whether they had on a mask? While cloth masks are …
A: Nope to those three, but yes to leadership, preparation, testing & tracing, and calm, science-based communication. It’s true: Maine is doing very well by almost all metrics used to track the epidemic. While 21 states had their highest daily case counts in the last 3 weeks, Maine’s single day record cases happened way back …