To help cut through the noise and sometimes conflicting advice, a network of research, policy and public health experts convened by Brown School of Public Health and Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics launched a Key Metrics For COVID Suppression framework that provides clear, accessible guidance to policy makers and the public on how to target and suppress COVID-19 more effectively across the nation.
“Policy-makers need clear and consistent visibility that permits differentiating policy across jurisdictions”, explains Danielle Allen, director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. “We also collectively need to keep focused on what should be our main target: a path to near zero case incidence.”
The framework brings clarity to metrics that help communities determine the severity of the outbreak they are responding to. The accompanying COVID Risk Level dashboard shows if a county or state is on the green, yellow, orange or red risk level, based on the number of new daily cases. The framework then delivers broad guidance on the intensity of control efforts needed based on these COVID risk levels. It offers key performance indicators for testing and contact tracing across all risk levels, as a backbone for suppression efforts.
