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Part 3: Roadblocks_ A Look Back on Carle Illinois' Response to COVID-19
From Ryann Monahan 2/25/2021
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University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign experts knew the students returning from around the country, and the world would bring COVID-19 into the community. “We ran the numbers and saw many of them were going to bring COVID-19 with them,” Martin Burke, Carle Illinois associate dean for research said.
With all of that, we had a plan.
Our plan and modeling predicted that with the fast, frequent, testing we would be able to mitigate the spread of an initial bump that would come with the students arriving. Leaders at UIUC had modeled very carefully what they thought was going to happen. The goal: be transparent, forthright, and understanding about all the challenges that the students return to campus represented.
Campus leaders prepared for roadblocks by modeling into the data science predictions that not all students were going to comply with the COVID-19 testing and contact tracing requirements. “We wanted to make sure we knew what we were up against,” Burke said.
Burke and his team predicted some students would go to parties, and that they wouldn’t wear masks. Warning signals came to the team quickly after the students returned. Something wasn’t working. However, because UIUC was conducting fast frequent COVID-19 testing, leaders were able to go on offense and do something about it. The team quickly learned what was causing this: a small subset of students made very bad choices, including knowing they were positive for COVID-19 and going to parties, or knowing they were positive for COVID-19 and hosting parties.
This reality was not in the team’s data modeling predictions. UIUC got a COVID-19 spike that threatened the shutdown of campus. However, the team was able to connect the dots and trace back the non-compliance. “Because we had the fast frequent testing, we knew about it early and could respond fast. We made immediate changes that had a fast effect,” Burke said Campus quickly moved to “essential activities only” for undergraduates and testing frequency was increased.
Next, Burke’s team launched a new team- SHIELD Team 30 – to speed up results and notifications to help get information to those who test positive faster- ideally within 30 minutes. All with those things together- the spike got reversed. “Because we went on offense and made changes in a data-driven way, we brought the spike right back down, and over the course of the next several weeks, we got back down to a low positivity rate and eventually hit 0.05%,” Burke explained.
The team was able to leverage the testing in an extraordinary way, in real-time, to mitigate what otherwise would have been a really difficult situation. That was the biggest challenge.
This is Part 3 of the series “A Look Back on Carle Illinois' Response to COVID-19”
Our plan and modeling predicted that with the fast, frequent, testing we would be able to mitigate the spread of an initial bump that would come with the students arriving. Leaders at UIUC had modeled very carefully what they thought was going to happen. The goal: be transparent, forthright, and understanding about all the challenges that the students return to campus represented.
Campus leaders prepared for roadblocks by modeling into the data science predictions that not all students were going to comply with the COVID-19 testing and contact tracing requirements. “We wanted to make sure we knew what we were up against,” Burke said.
Burke and his team predicted some students would go to parties, and that they wouldn’t wear masks. Warning signals came to the team quickly after the students returned. Something wasn’t working. However, because UIUC was conducting fast frequent COVID-19 testing, leaders were able to go on offense and do something about it. The team quickly learned what was causing this: a small subset of students made very bad choices, including knowing they were positive for COVID-19 and going to parties, or knowing they were positive for COVID-19 and hosting parties.
This reality was not in the team’s data modeling predictions. UIUC got a COVID-19 spike that threatened the shutdown of campus. However, the team was able to connect the dots and trace back the non-compliance. “Because we had the fast frequent testing, we knew about it early and could respond fast. We made immediate changes that had a fast effect,” Burke said Campus quickly moved to “essential activities only” for undergraduates and testing frequency was increased.
Next, Burke’s team launched a new team- SHIELD Team 30 – to speed up results and notifications to help get information to those who test positive faster- ideally within 30 minutes. All with those things together- the spike got reversed. “Because we went on offense and made changes in a data-driven way, we brought the spike right back down, and over the course of the next several weeks, we got back down to a low positivity rate and eventually hit 0.05%,” Burke explained.
The team was able to leverage the testing in an extraordinary way, in real-time, to mitigate what otherwise would have been a really difficult situation. That was the biggest challenge.
This is Part 3 of the series “A Look Back on Carle Illinois' Response to COVID-19”
- Tags
- Date of creation
- 2/25/2021 12:00 AM
- Video credits
- Ryann Monahan, Carle Illinois College of Medicine
- Appears In
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