Local officials push survey tool to catch early signs of COVID-19

Local officials are encouraging people throughout the Rochester-Finger Lakes region to self-report their health status as a way to find clusters of people with early-stage COVID-19.

Participants would fill out a simple questionnaire every day about any signs of ill health. Public health officials would track reports of symptoms such as fever or troubledbreathing.

People would not provide their names or addresses — but would enter their ZIP code, age, gender and race or ethnicity to help health officials look for patterns.

ROC COVID, as the new system has been dubbed, will be used to find coronavirus hot spots and identify at-risk populations, said Wade Norwood, chief executive of Common Ground Health.

"I'm convinced this will provide the data we need to successfully reopen our community and keep our economy as strong as it can be while also keeping people as healthy as possible," he said.

Common Ground Health, the regional health-care planning organization, will store and analyze the incoming data and share it with government and health-care partners.

To sign up, go to roccovid.org. Visitors can fill out the questionnaire there or provide an email address to which a daily reminder and link will be sent.

By next week, text message reminders and links will be available for those who want to provide their mobile numbers, Monroe County Executive Adam Bello said at a Zoom news conference Thursday afternoon.

Bello and others said ROC COVID will only yield meaningful data if broad segments of the rural, suburban and urban portions of the region take part daily.

"I cannot stress how important it is to sign up and do this. Register today. You can do it right now," Bello said. "This is how we are going to stop COVID-19 in its tracks. This is how we will safely reopen and, as a community, stay open."

ROC COVID is seeking input from people in Monroe plus Allegany, Chemung, Genesee, Livingston, Ontario, Orleans, Schuyler, Seneca, Steuben, Wayne, Wyoming and Yates counties. Data will be shared with local officials there.

Outreach efforts are planned if participation seems to lag in particular areas. A Spanish version of the questionnaire is in the works, Bello said.

Dr. Michael Mendoza, the county's public health commissioner, said researchers at Yale and Stanford universities have deployed similar daily surveys. The Rochester-Finger Lakes effort is the first in New York state.

"This information is going to be very helpful," Mendoza said. "We’re looking for patterns, we’re looking for trends, we’re looking for things that may emerge. This is an attempt to look into the future by looking at what is happening literally every morning, every day, here in our community."

Mendoza said it's important that healthy people fill out the form each day so that health officials can understand what portion of a given ZIP code's population is well and what portion is not.

The findings will help inform what happens next.

"I look at it more as a way to know when to turn on the brakes. If we see something blossoming in a particular part of the county and we do some focused testing, we do some outreach and we see some concerns there in terms of contact tracing, that would be my indication to want to slow down the (reopening) process.

"But certainly you can see it the other way," he said.

"If things continue to be quiet in regard to the symptom tracker and that correlates with what we’re seeing in terms of new cases and hospitalizations and so forth, then it would be further impetus to say 'Well, we are ready.'"

Contact watchdog reporter Steve Orr at [email protected] or at (585) 258-2386. Follow him on Twitter at @SOrr1. This coverage is only possible with support from our readers. If you don't already have a digital subscription, please sign up today.