Despite the severe challenges of this pandemic, there are opportunities to benefit all of us. We have significant gaps in our understanding of COVID-19, and now is an excellent time to put our underused students to work with researchers who are not directly responding to the crisis. For example, we desperately need a contact/exposure database.
I, like many people, am in quarantine because I was potentially exposed in Italy before the U.S. began social distancing. Asymptomatic and untested, I have no idea if I’m a carrier or whom I may have potentially exposed during my overseas travel and frenzied return through Seattle.
Let’s use our students and academic community to develop a database of contact and exposure for as many untested Alaskans as possible to fill this critical data gap. This is deeply valuable work that could help Alaska more proactively control the spread and could lead to student publication. These data would provide significant value to decision-makers, such as guiding criteria for testing. It’s too late for us to adopt the South Korea model, in which they utilized extensive contact data to guide widespread testing to control the spread. It’s not too late to do the work to reduce the slope of contagion here in Alaska and provide value to other states.
— Alison Kelley
Anchorage
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