Speaker 1: It's Thursday, April six. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily
Speaker 1: coronavirus update. As the country gets ready to reopen the economy,
Speaker 1: states are already preparing test and trace programs that will
Speaker 1: help in the effort. Massachusetts, Utah, and North Dakota are
Speaker 1: among those working on a comprehensive strategy that includes increased
Speaker 1: testing and contact tracing that will monitor those that are
Speaker 1: infected and their close contacts. Emma Court, health reporter at
Speaker 1: Bloomberg News, joins us for how technology will play a
Speaker 1: major role. Thanks for joining us, Emma, thanks for having
Speaker 1: me so as we keep eyeing a way to get back,
Speaker 1: a way to get the economy reopen. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of states that are preparing test and trace programs so
Speaker 1: they can reopen their economies. And basically, I know we've
Speaker 1: been talking about testing for so long now, but we
Speaker 1: still need to ramp up the testing and then follow
Speaker 1: through tracking these cases, seeing where those people that turn
Speaker 1: out positive, where they were, who they came in contact with.
Speaker 1: All of this is in an effort to be able
Speaker 1: to reopen our economies again. Emma tell us how this works.
Speaker 1: There's few states that are kind of on the front
Speaker 1: lines of trying to think of some next steps in
Speaker 1: terms of getting beyond sort of the current testing and
Speaker 1: kind of disease crisis and looking at more preventative approaches
Speaker 1: to making sure that we kind of tamped down that
Speaker 1: curve of COVID cases. So a few states that we
Speaker 1: looked at in our story were Utah, Massachusetts, and North Dakota,
Speaker 1: and we saw in Utah and Massachusetts in particular, there
Speaker 1: was a real focus on not just kind of expanding
Speaker 1: testing capabilities, which you know, as many people may know,
Speaker 1: it's been a real problem. I'm not just kind of
Speaker 1: getting people tested, but getting them tested promptly enough that
Speaker 1: it matters for them in terms of kind of dictating
Speaker 1: how they behave in society, right, but also kind of
Speaker 1: looking at this sort of test in trace model. So
Speaker 1: once someone gets sick and they've been confirmed to have
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen, really making sure that you look at all
Speaker 1: of the possible ways they could have potentially spread this
Speaker 1: infection in the community, reaching out to people they were
Speaker 1: in touch with, and really following up. So if let's
Speaker 1: say I had contact with an infective person at my
Speaker 1: grocery store a week ago. I ran into this person
Speaker 1: and said hi, and they remember that interaction and recount
Speaker 1: it to someone with this public health department, then falling
Speaker 1: up with me and saying, hey, you may have been
Speaker 1: in contact with someone who had COVID, and following up
Speaker 1: and saying how are you feeling? Do you have symptoms,
Speaker 1: and not just following up that day, but really throughout
Speaker 1: time to make sure that you're really being comprehensive about
Speaker 1: your approach, saying you know, you should probably self isolate
Speaker 1: as a precaution, things like that. So this is, as
Speaker 1: you might imagine, work that is really really resourced intensive.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about I mean, in Massachusetts they want
Speaker 1: to hire about a thousand people you talk folk about
Speaker 1: twelve hundred state employees and had them go over to
Speaker 1: kind of local health departments to help out with this work.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's possible to take a lot more
Speaker 1: people than that. And I spoke with someone Partners and Help,
Speaker 1: which is a group working with Massachusetts on this initiative,
Speaker 1: and you know, the chief medical officer there said she
Speaker 1: wouldn't be mad if they had forty or fifty thousand
Speaker 1: people doing this work. And I think there's some really
Speaker 1: interesting ideas there too, in terms of unemployment being such
Speaker 1: a huge problem these days. I think there's some interesting
Speaker 1: questions about can we get people back to work in
Speaker 1: a way that also resolves this crisis. I think it's
Speaker 1: an interesting idea. It definitely is. The only flip side
Speaker 1: of that would be once things start calming down, what
Speaker 1: do you do with all these people when you don't
Speaker 1: need to keep doing that amount of tracking. But obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, who knows we might have to keep doing
Speaker 1: this for some time to come. The other angle on
Speaker 1: this is the technological angle. There's some apps that are
Speaker 1: sprouting up so you can kind of be tracked on
Speaker 1: the app. I know some people would have a problem
Speaker 1: with being tracked in that way, but that's another part
Speaker 1: of this as well, this contact tracing. And I think
Speaker 1: there's some really interesting applications of technology here. We've seen
Speaker 1: that happen in other countries as well. Obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: there are different culture, role and political norms here in
Speaker 1: the US that you have to consider. But what we
Speaker 1: saw in North Dakota was they took this app that
Speaker 1: they had been using to sort of you know, it's
Speaker 1: called the Bison tracker and they used it. They were
Speaker 1: going to their championship football game in Texas and it
Speaker 1: was a way for fans to kind of track their
Speaker 1: progress on this long drive over to Texas, and they said,
Speaker 1: this might be helpful for tracking COVID cases. So it's
Speaker 1: a way that people can opt in to using this app.
Speaker 1: They can basically track their movements and then you know,
Speaker 1: as they turn out to be sick, they can actually
Speaker 1: if they want to use that information in conjunction with
Speaker 1: the public health officials and try to kind of get
Speaker 1: in touch with people they've maybe potentially been in contact
Speaker 1: with along their time and things like that. And I
Speaker 1: always love a good detail about a bison tracking app
Speaker 1: kind of being repurposed for public health, right, kind of cool.
Speaker 1: They renamed it, by the way, Yeah, they renamed it
Speaker 1: to Care nineteen and reportedly they had more than ten
Speaker 1: thousand downloads in the first thirty six hours. So I mean,
Speaker 1: that's great that people want to get in on that,
Speaker 1: But it is very much an opt in type of
Speaker 1: situation when you're working even with hiring people to do
Speaker 1: like the tedious and time intensive work manually in making
Speaker 1: phone calls and doing on that. Even on that front,
Speaker 1: it's up to the person individually to follow the rules
Speaker 1: there on the other side as well, right, But I
Speaker 1: do think what's interesting about it is we're seeing people feeling,
Speaker 1: like I've touch on ends about kind of this crisis,
Speaker 1: feeling like all they can really do is stay at home,
Speaker 1: you know, for those who are lucky enough to stay
Speaker 1: at home, and this provides a way to sort of
Speaker 1: be actively involved in this public health crisis. I also
Speaker 1: think it's worth noting that we've seen some of the
Speaker 1: big tech companies team up pretty recently and say we
Speaker 1: want to do this kind of work as well, and
Speaker 1: they may have a bigger reach. I think the effort
Speaker 1: that they are collaborating on could reach like, I think
Speaker 1: a third of the population or something like that. So
Speaker 1: there are sort of some bigger kind of tools that
Speaker 1: might be able to be useful in this in this
Speaker 1: yeh on that for an, Apple and Google announce that
Speaker 1: they're trying to build software that they can put into
Speaker 1: the Android and I phones that would help people attract
Speaker 1: these encounters. And I think even in California, Governor Gavin
Speaker 1: Newsom said that he wants to incorporate some type of
Speaker 1: smartphone contact tracing as part of his strategy to lift
Speaker 1: these statewide stay at home orders. So this is gonna
Speaker 1: be something you're gonna hear about a little bit more
Speaker 1: in the coming weeks, just as states and cities are
Speaker 1: really desperate right now to get things back open and
Speaker 1: pumping in again. So everybody's looking at a lot of
Speaker 1: different avenues. Antibody testing was another thing that we're hearing
Speaker 1: a lot about. These are all different things that we're
Speaker 1: looking at to try and track this so that people
Speaker 1: can stay away from hot spots or help avoid creating
Speaker 1: new hotspots. And I think there are like a few
Speaker 1: important caveats those kind of work. So, for one, what
Speaker 1: we're talking about is really preventative strategies. They may not
Speaker 1: translate in the exact same ways to areas that have
Speaker 1: really known widespread hotspots. So I'm thinking of places like
Speaker 1: New York or Seattle may have a different pass forward
Speaker 1: than some places that have been sort of somewhat left
Speaker 1: hard hit as far as we know based on the
Speaker 1: numbers coming out of those play says. I think it's
Speaker 1: also important to consider sort of the fact that testing
Speaker 1: has been a real bottleneck and even these ambitious plans
Speaker 1: coming out of these states, we may not see that,
Speaker 1: at least initially, and you know, hopefully in the long
Speaker 1: run overcome some of these ball next. So you know,
Speaker 1: I talked to the broad in Massachusetts. They took a
Speaker 1: lab that had been doing n A testing work and
Speaker 1: they repurposed it to do COVID nineteen testing kind of
Speaker 1: in March. And you know, I think what's really interesting,
Speaker 1: And I talked about lab director there Is. I said,
Speaker 1: you know, but you guys want to expand so much.
Speaker 1: You're doing two thousand tests a day, you want to
Speaker 1: do ten thousand. What's the barrier to getting there? And
Speaker 1: she said, you know, we don't have enough of these supplies.
Speaker 1: And she was hopeful that they would, by the way,
Speaker 1: but I think that's something we've seen for weeks now,
Speaker 1: for some time now, really be a problem if you
Speaker 1: don't have enough swabs to take people, simple as you
Speaker 1: can't do enough testing. And I think that's a really
Speaker 1: important challenge that you shouldn't underestimate. Am a court health
Speaker 1: reporter at Bloomberg News. Thank you very much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been
Speaker 1: your daily coronavirus update. Don't forget that. For today's big
Speaker 1: news stories, you can check me out on the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast every Monday through Friday, so follow us on
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts.