Noed: Orenstein: COVID Tracking

Natalie Orenstein: UC Berkeley to track asymptomatic COVID-19 spread in East Bay by testing 5,000 people https://www.berkeleyside.com/2020/04/... 'Researchers want to understand much more about asymptomatic transmission of the coronavirus in the East Bay, so they���re launching a major longitudinal study following at least 5,000 local people who show no sign of the disease. They hope the results will guide policy and preventive measures. ���We have no idea how many asymptomatic people are walking around with detectable virus,��� said Lisa Barcellos, who���s leading the study with Eva Harris. ���This is a real-time capture of how things are now and how they���ll change.��� The researchers will come up with a 5,000-person group representative of the population in the East Bay���on the bay side, from Hercules through Oakland.... Ultimately Barcellos and Harris expect to produce a trove of data on asymptomatic spread by zip code, age, sex, and race/ethnicity. While there are disturbing reports across the country of higher COVID-19 death rates for black people, for example, there are not a lot of hard data on risk factors yet, and generally ���what we know is coming from cases that were hospitalized,��� said Barcellos.�����A��representative, population-based sample is much more informative from a public health perspective,��� said Barcellos, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics... #berkeley #coronavirus #noted #publichealth #2020-05-18