Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus / 17.07.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Rajan K. Chakrabarty, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering Washington University in Saint Louis MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: At the onset of COVID-19, we developed a state-of-the-art epidemic progression model involving the susceptible, exposed, infected, and recovered (SEIR) dynamics, the age-stratified disease transmissibility, and the possible large-scale undocumented asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19 taking place in the US states. By informing our model with using epidemiological COVID-19 data for the US between March 19 and 28 – a period corresponding to the early stage of the epidemic when the impacts of social distancing on disease progression were yet to manifest – we investigated: “What is the medical cost benefit of implementing social distancing as the “only” non-pharmaceutical intervention policy to combat COVID-19 in the US?” As part of this study, we investigated three social distancing strategies – indefinite, finite-duration, and intermittent – on age-stratified US population and benchmark its effectiveness in reducing the burden on hospital beds. (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, JAMA / 28.05.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Soumya Sen PhD McKnight Presidential Fellow Mary & Jim Lawrence Fellow of Carlson School Director of Research, MIS Research Center Associate Professor, Information & Decision Sciences Carlson School of Management University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: As the Covid-19 pandemic unfolded across the United States, one of the greatest barriers to understanding the extent of the problem was the lack of reliable and consistent data. Some of the metrics being reported, such as case count and death, are insufficient for hospital capacity planning. Case count is a conservative estimate of the actual number of infected individuals in the absence of community-wide serologic testing, while death count is a lagging metric and insufficient for proactive hospital capacity planning. A more valuable metric for assessing the effects of public health interventions on the health care infrastructure is hospitalizations. Therefore, the Medical Industry Leadership Institute (MILI) and the Management Information Systems Research Center (MISRC) at the Carlson School of Management launched the COVID-19 hospitalization tracking project in March to consistently track and report daily hospitalizations from all reporting states. Tracking daily hospitalization data is a major step forward in quantifying the current impact on local hospital systems, modeling and  forecasting future utilization needs, and tracking the rate of change in the disease severity. It is also useful for understanding the role of health policy interventions in slowing or reducing the impact of the pandemic. (more…)