Monthly Archives: May 2020

Novateks Yamal LNG facility in Sabetta, northern Russia. Photo: Novatek

Chinas Arctic engagement has increased considerably during the past decade, which has not only offered plentiful economic opportunities but also created new risks and concerns among the eight Arctic states, non-state actors, and peoples. To increase understanding of dimensions of Beijings Arctic activities, The Arctic Institutes new China series probes into Chinas evolving Arctic interests, policies, and strategies, and analyses their ramifications for the region (and beyond).

During the last twenty years of increased activity in the Arctic, China has become one of Russias most successful Asian partners. The scale of the Yamal LNG and Arctic LNG 2 projects stimulates discussion on further strengthening of bilateral cooperation. At the same time, during the analysis of this new area of relations, it is important to take into account several factors.

For both Russia and China, Arctic activities are associated with the development of territories, which has long remained a challenge. This factor, in spite of its high importance, is not discussed with the same thoroughness as the demand for having sources of energy supply and new routes.

However, the Russian Arctic today is inextricably linked with the development of the Russian Far East. The Northern Sea Route along the circumpolar coast of the Arctic country attracts the transit of cargo by sea and Siberian rivers, and helps to increase the connectivity of previously inaccessible and sparsely populated territories. The Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East and the Arctic oversees infrastructure development projects aiming to unite the land.

For China, emergent Arctic logistics also promise to give new impetus to the economically lagging northeastern Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces. Both provinces actively cooperate with Russias northern and Far Eastern administrations and strive to formalize their role within the northern branch of the Silk Road.

These domestic motivations add value to national politics in raising the GDP and seeking new routes for strategic maneuvering. This factor emphasizes the natural difference between the national interests of the two states.

Sino-Russian collaboration in the Arctic remains a part of the general outline of bilateral relations. Today, the comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation of the two states, thanks to a series of joint statements, have included the Arctic as an important sphere of partnership. In the same context, the discussed docking of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with its polar branch also shapes a new framework for the implementation of Arctic projects. Besides, for the reasons described above, Arctic cooperation is associated with border relations between the two countries. In this regard, for example, such projects as Primorye-1 and Primorye-2 turn out to be embedded in logistics focused on deliveries of cargo via the Northern Sea Route.

All the above brings new political leverage for promoting Arctic cooperation. At the same time, it allows involving a larger bunch of international and bilateral mechanisms from the already established, to the potentially effective for the reasons of security and regional cooperation.

The legacy of bilateral affairs affects the relations between Russia and China in the Arctic. It would seem, quite rightly, that for Russia and China, cooperation in the Arctic has no historical precedents. With the exception of some exotic examples, such as activities of the Russian-American Company, which at one time included the delivery of Chinese goods to Alaska, the countries do not have enough experience of interacting in the region. Nevertheless, as part of bilateral relations, they are developing the hard-won principles of cooperation, which above all include the desire to be equal partners and remain independent from each other. Chinas pragmatic approach to the Arctic, even more, encourages Russia to adhere to these rules and develop interaction with other Asian partners. Therefore, the bilateral cooperation in the region inevitably remains a balance between the largest Arctic state with a developing resource-based economy and the Arctic newcomer riding the wave of the economic boom.

The strategic shifts in the Arctic affect Sino-Russian relations in the region. The climatic drive for circumpolar development opened up a new geopolitical environment. The increase in shipping access to Asia through the Bering Strait involves the states of the North Pacific with strategic interaction. Thus, the determination of Russia and China intersects with the interests of Japan, North and South Korea, and the United States, bringing to life a new balance of power.

Another aspect related to the development of the circumpolar north is the emerging of a new international route from Europe to Asia. Both states are hoping to use this opportunity in their national interests: Russia strives to turn the Northern Sea Route into an international transport corridor, and China aspires to develop the initiative of the Polar Silk Road.

For these reasons, differences in approaches, the legal interpretation, discrepancies and the issues of the strategic balance invariably appear in documents and stay in the framework of bilateral cooperation in the Arctic.

Sino-Russian relations in the Arctic are of a complicated nature and are tightly bound to a whole scope of diversified factors from the domestic motives of the territorial development to the historical background and strategic interests. In this regard, the nuanced approach to the analysis may provide a more precise and unbiased assessment of Sino-Russian relations in the Arctic.

Dr. Mariia Kobzeva is a Postdoctoral Fellow at UiT-The Arctic University of Norway, Troms.

Here is the original post:

A Framework for Sino-Russian Relations in the Arctic - The Arctic Institute

The coronavirus pandemic continues to spread across the Ohio Valley Region. But stay at home orders and social distancing restrictions reduced the number of cases modelers projected without them.

Now there is pressure to ease the restrictions and open states economies back up as the businesses that were closed struggle to find relief and record numbers of people apply for unemployment.

Here is a brief rundown of how West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky plan to reopen businesses.

West Virginia Governor Jim Justice announced on April 27 that the state would begin reopening businesses before the federal government and outside organizations recommended.

The voluntary openings in the West Virginia Strong The Comeback plan are scheduled to take place in waves over three to six weeks, depending on outbreaks and hospitalizations spikes as social distancing restrictions relax.

Week 1 (April 30)

-Hospitals across the state were able to resume elective medical procedures, provided that they have a plan in place to safely phase-in procedures based on clinical judgement while following all CDC guidelines. They must also have enough personal protective equipment and a plan to respond if there is a surge of COVID-19 patients in the future. The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources Office of Health Facility Licensure & Certification was tasked with approving each application.

-Outpatient health care operations could resume if their boards or associations approved.

-Testing of daycare staff began across the state.

Week 2 (May 4)

-The states Stay at Home was replaced with a Safer at Home order on May 4.

-Any small business with fewer than 10 employees was able to resume operations.

-All businesses providing professional services, such as hair salons, nail salons, barbershops and pet grooming were permitted to reopen. But customers are required to make appointments for these businesses and must wait in their vehicles until their appointment.

-Outdoor dining at restaurants is permitted under strict physical distancing restrictions.

-Churches and funeral homes that chose to stop in-person services that wish to resume are encouraged to take extra precautions such as limiting seating to every other pew, maintaining physical distancing and wearing face covering restrictions.

All businesses included in the Week 2 phase of reopenings are required to operate with physical distancing measures in effect. Businesses are also required to implement efforts to increase sanitation and the use of face coverings.

Weeks 3-6 (May 11)

-Wellness centers operated by or with West Virginia Licensed Health Care providers, dental offices (as approved by the West Virginia Board of Dentistry) and drive-in theaters will open up May 11.

-Remaining business including office and government buildings, specialty retail stores, parks and facilities at parks, gyms, fitness centers, recreation centers, dine-in restaurants, hotels, casinos, spas and massage parlors and other businesses will be notified one week before they are allowed to reopen.

-There is no timetable for the reopening of nursing home visitation, entertainment venues and gatherings of more than 25 people.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine also announced his Responsible Restart Ohio plan to reopen businesses in the state on April 27.

He said the plan was a balancing act between restarting the economy and keeping people safe, outlining measures to increase testing and contact tracing.

DeWine organized the plan by when certain sectors would reopen. Some business owners continue to wait on the governors word.

May 1

-The states Stay at Home order was replaced with a Stay Safe Ohio order scheduled to run through May 29. The order relaxed some restrictions, but still included social distancing and sanitation practices at businesses and banning social gatherings of 10 or more people.

-DeWine signed an order allowing hospital procedures to resume as long they dont require an overnight stay in the hospital. There are exceptions, such as cases involving cancer or extreme pain.The order also applied to dentistry and veterinary offices.

May 2

-Retailers could open offering curbside pickup only.

May 4

-All construction, manufacturing and distribution companies could reopen.

-General office environments could reopen.

May 12

-Retailers can open in-store operations.

All companies that reopen were told they have to follow five rules:

-Wear face masks (for most employees, not customers)

-Assess employee health daily health, such as by checking temperatures

-Maintain good hygiene

-Clean and sanitize surfaces frequently

-Limit capacity to 50 percent of fire code requirement to maintain social distancing

On May 7, DeWine announced another round of openings.

May 15

-Barbershops, salons, day spas and similar personal services can reopen under new guidelines. These include waiting for appointments outside, only allowing the person holding the appointment inside (with some exceptions for children) and mask wearing for workers

-Outdoor dining and restaurant and bars can resume. Restaurants and bars must operate under guidelines developed by working groups established by DeWine. These include barriers between seating areas, no open congregate areas, employees required to wear masks (with exceptions for cooks and certain other employees).

May 21

Indoor dining at restaurants and bars can resume under new guidelines

DeWines working groups will establish timelines for remaining businesses, including entertainment venues, to reopen.

Kentucky is taking a slower approach to reopening that Ohio and West Virginia.

Gov. Andy Beshear announced his Healthy at Work plan would include different phases for the health care industry and non-health care industries.

April 27

-Non-emergent/non-urgent outpatient healthcare services were permitted to resume. This includes physical therapy, chiropractic services, dentistry, oral surgery and anesthesia. Non-emergent/non-urgent surgical and invasive procedures were not included in this phase.

May 6

Outpatient/ambulatory surgery and invasive procedures can resume. But all patients must have COVID-19 pre-procedure testing and each facility must maintain a 14-day supply of all necessary PPE. Acute care hospitals must maintain at least 30 percent bed capacity, per facility surge plan, in both ICU and total beds for COVID-19 patients.

May 11

-Manufacturing and construction businesses may reopen.

-Vehicle or vessel dealerships can reopen

-Half of office-based businesses may reopen.

-Horse racing, with no fans, may resume.

-Dog grooming and board can continue.

May 13

Non-emergent/non-urgent inpatient surgery and procedures may resume at 50% of pre-COVID-19 shutdown volume. The same guidelines with outpatient/ambulatory surgery and invasive procedures will apply.

May 20

Retail businesses can resume in-store shopping.

-Houses of Worship can hold in-person services with social distancing guidelines.

May 22

-Restaurants will be able to open at one-third capacity with some social distancing requirements.

May 25

-Kentuckians will be allowed to gather in groups of 10 or fewer.

-Barbers, salons, cosmetology businesses and similar services may resume.

May 27

Non-emergent/non-urgent inpatient surgery and procedures may resume at volume determined by each facility.

June 1

-Movie theaters and gyms will be able to open.

June 11

-Campgrounds will be allowed to open.

June 15

-Childcare facilities and youth sports can begin operation.

July 1

-Bars will be allowed to open and groups of 50 can meet.

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How Ohio Valley States Are Reopening Their Economies - Ohio Valley ReSource

The following is a contributed article by Todd Snitchler, President and CEO, Electric Power Supply Association.

As policymakers in states including New Jersey, Maryland, and Illinois consider exitingPJM Interconnection's capacity market to pursue clean energy goals, they should look to Virginia as a cautionary tale. Alternatives such as the Fixed Resource Requirement (FRR) come with stark consequences for power customers and questionable environmental gains.

Power prices in PJM were the lowest on record in 2019 and emissions have decreased by 34%since 2005 without mandates or requirements to produce clean energy. Why the rush to abandon a successful system for an option that PJM's Independent Market Monitor estimates would raise costs in Marylandand Illinoisto the tune of $200-400 million?

The latest energy news from Virginia provides an additional data point showing the potential costs of the FRR path.

Last Friday, Dominion Energy, which holds a monopoly over power generation and distribution in Virginia, offered state regulators a clean energy proposal with a stunning price tag: nearly $50 per month added to each customer's power bill. Yet the utility's plan only halves current carbon emissions by 2035 with proposals including the addition of 5 GW of offshore wind and 2 GW of battery storage.

While more cost-effective and efficient options to fight climate change likely exist after all, onshore wind and solar are increasingly the least expensive energy technologies the state has nowhere else to turn for power generation solutions.

Dominion's 2020 Integrated Resource Plan(IRP) is the first filed under Virginia's Clean Economy Act, which goes into effect on July 1, 2020, and requires 100% clean energy by 2050. The upshot is far from surprising: An aggressive, single-state clean energy goal paired with a powerful utility spells trouble for Virginia families and businesses already struggling financially due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dominion touted its planto "quadruple" renewable energy and energy storage, and many have praised the company's aggressive renewable additions. Improving our environment is a worthy goal, and one EPSA's members support, but the headlines miss some key details.

Because natural gas is still the cleanest, least cost option needed to support intermittent resources, the IRP proposes to build 970 MW of new natural gas-fired generation to back up a renewable-heavy grid in all four scenarios. And even the most aggressive options proposed only halve current Commonwealth emissions by 2035.

But what is most problematic about Dominion's IRP is the most instructive for other states. It's also the least surprising for those of us who know what happens when generators exert market power.

Dominion estimates that under its second least aggressive option, "Alternative B," consumer bills will increase by $45.92 a monthby 2035. That's a nearly 40% increase.

Such a hit would raise eyebrows in normal times, but when families and business are struggling to recover from the devastating economic impacts of COVID-19, a massive increase to their power bills is the last thing they need.

How can responsible leaders justify burdening their constituents with this expense when there is a more sustainable, cost-effective path to reduce emissions? Moreover, the financial strain could undermine political appetite for clean energy efforts across the board, putting environmental progress at the whim of the next election and plummeting state revenues.

Dominion has a history of pursuing questionable, over-priced projects. Just last year, the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) was forced to approve a Dominion plan to build a new offshore wind facility despite finding that it would not be "prudent under any common interpretation of the term"and was the highest cost option proposed.

PJM is the regional power grid serving 65 million customers in 13 states and the District of Columbia, including Virginia. Unlike Virginia, many of the states in PJM require power generators to compete against other companies to build new plants resulting in a stronger grid and cleaner generation.

While FRR is not an explicit return to the monopoly model that exists in Virginia, it is functionally similar.

Under an FRR, the states oversee resource adequacy decisions and consumers are deprived of the benefits of regional competition and power pooling. Economics 101 tells us that monopolies are bad for consumers and Dominion's latest IRP proves it especially when determinations of "just and reasonable" are dictated by statute and not based on the evidence evaluated through a regulatory proceeding.

Competitive power suppliers in PJM and across the nation are retiring unnecessary, costly, and often higher-emitting plants while building more efficient cutting-edge solutions, including renewable resources and battery storage without asking ratepayers to foot the construction bill. Nearly 31,000 MWof coal generation capacity has been deactivated in the PJM footprint since 2002, resulting in substantial emissions reductions and cost savings.

Meanwhile, back in Virginia, Dominion is proposing a plan that will increase power bills by nearly $50 a month at a time when consumers should be benefiting from the lowest prices on record.

The lesson is clear for Maryland, New Jersey and Illinois leaders. Customers deserve better. Rather than trying to go it alone, PJM states should work together to find regional cost-effective solutions to address and reduce carbon emissions on a wide scale not highly fragmented approaches that rely on politically powerful monopolies.

At EPSA, we're working with a broad coalitionincluding renewable developers and economic experts to find market solutions that will achieve sustainable climate progress at a cost Americans can afford. States abandoned the monopoly model for a reason. Let's not go back now.

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Dominion's nearly $50 monthly power bill hike in Virginia is a warning for other states - Utility Dive

REUTERS/Brendan Mcdermid

Besides helping societies remain connected over the Internet, these technologies are also enabling public health officials to track potentially infected individuals, enforce quarantine measures, create community-wide awareness about the virus, and plan coordinated responses to deal with resource shortages. So how exactly is this being done?

Countries like Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, and Israel are using data from citizens mobile phones to perform contact tracing a method that uses trajectory and geo-location data from mobile phones to detect and isolate individuals who were in close proximity to someone who has been tested positive for COVID-19. It is based on the same technology and analytics that digital marketers often use to identify and target potential customers with advertisements through their smartphone apps, such as in geo-targeting and geo-fencing.

Soumya Sen

Quarantine enforcement

In China, the country where COVID-19 cases were first reported, Baidu the Chinese equivalent of Google has developed an infrared sensor for no-contact screening that uses AI to automatically identify individuals with fever, even when they are in a crowd. The government has created a health code app that give users a color-coded designation based on their health status and travel history, which can be checked by the authorities before permitting entry into crowded locations, for example, train stations. A green code allows a user to travel, a yellow code indicates that the user should be in self-isolation, and a red code indicates the user has tested positive for the virus and requires quarantine. The Chinese government views this health code app as an essential tool to ensure that its healthy citizens can get back to work while others observe the quarantine measures fully. The intent is to prevent a second wave of infections that could harm its economy even further. Similarly, Taiwan rolled out a mobile phone-based electronic fence that monitors the phone signals of quarantined individuals and alerts the police if they leave their home.

In the U.S., tech giant Google has announced that it will use anonymous and aggregated user data from mobile phones to help government agencies understand if social distancing rules are being observed in public places in different counties. Many federal and state government agencies are also working with telecom operators and mobile advertisers to measure the success of their lockdown directives.

Mobile apps are also playing a vital role in creating awareness in the community about the virus. For example, the government of India has launched a chatbot feature on WhatsApp, called MyGov Corona Helpdesk. Its citizens can send text messages to this chatbot to receive authoritative answers about coronavirus symptoms and treatment. An active community of software developers in India is also developing innovative mobile applications ranging from those that help patients locate nearest hospitals with available beds to those that facilitate grocery delivery for senior citizens.

Faced with the problem of long wait times for callers inquiring about COVID-19 information, several health care centers in the U.S. are deploying AI-based software to replace staffed hotlines with online screening and triage tools. The goal is to identify those callers who do need additional medical care (e.g., high-risk patients who need to be directed to testing sites, clinics, or emergency departments) while reassuring others who only need some information and self-monitoring.

Another area in which information technology is playing a vital role is in hospital resource planning. In this era of big data, various organizations have been collecting data from multiple sources about this pandemic and developing analytics-powered dashboards to present real-time information to the public. For example, several websites are reporting data about the number of COVID cases, hospitalizations, and death counts in different countries. Many state governments in the U.S. have also launched their own dashboards to provide timely information to the public. These public data repositories will allow researchers and policymakers quantify the real-time impact on hospital systems and forecast future utilization levels of hospital resources.

These are just some of the ways in which data, analytics, and technology are helping us to respond to this global pandemic. With no cure or vaccine available in the immediate future, we will need to increasingly rely on data, analytics, and technology to turn the tide against the spread of the virus. There will be many more examples of human ingenuity that will emerge from this crisis, and hopefully these innovations will also help propel our society forward in the post-COVID world.

Soumya Sen, Ph.D.,is a McKnight Presidential Fellow and an associate professor of Information & Decision Sciences at theCarlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. His expertise is in internet technologies, data communications, electronic commerce, cloud technology, network security and broadband data pricing.

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How data, analytics, and technology are helping us fight COVID-19 - MinnPost

The Finance Ministry has begun writing to several other ministries to put new projects on hold as it prepares to introduce the budget for the next fiscal year amid a slowing economy due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The government has frozen new hires and there won't be an increase in the salaries of civil servants this year even as tax rates go up, according to Finance Ministry sources.

The impact of the lockdown on businesses and a drastic reduction in remittance, all caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, will be reflected in the reduced size of the annual budget and its spending allocation.

Ever since the government instituted a nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid-19, Nepal has been in the midst of financial stress. The lockdown, which has been in place for over a month, has reduced consumer spending and impacted domestic worker wages and money remitted by migrant workers, according to economists.

"This, in turn, has caused sales and income tax revenues, the major source of capital in the annual budget, to plummet, said economist Bishwamber Pyakurel. "Given the deficit in financial resources, the government should dramatically reduce the size of the budget, with allocation only for development projects that are in the final phase of completion.

According to government officials, the upcoming budget will focus on improving health infrastructure as the pandemic has brought to light its poor state, which has increased Nepals vulnerability to the coronavirus. The budget will also focus on employment generation, as tens of thousands of Nepali migrant workers are expected to return home after losing their jobs in foreign countries due to the global economic crisis caused by the pandemic.

The Ministry of Labour and Employment has projected that around 400,000 Nepalis are expected to return home. This number will supplement the thousands of domestic workers who will also lose jobs at home.

According to finance experts, a reduction in the size of the budget could benefit the country, as every year, a large budget is introduced and the government fails to spend it.

This government appears to believe that a bigger budget brings about development and prosperity faster, Ram Sharan Mahat, a former finance minister, told the Post. But the success of the budget depends on its implementation."

According to Mahat, who is also the coordinator of the special budget committee formed by the opposition Nepali Congress, the size of the budget should not be bigger than Rs 1.2 trillion.

In February, the government had whittled down the budget for this fiscal year by 10 percent after realising that it wouldn't be able to spend the amounts allocated. In the mid-term budget review, Finance Minister Yubaraj Khatiwada had trimmed the budget down to Rs 1.38 trillion from Rs 1.53 trillion.

Pushpa Raj Kandel, vice-chairman of the National Planning Commission, told the Post early this week that the resource committee he heads will likely make a downward revision in the budget ceiling by 5-10 percent.

Various ministries and government agencies prepare a list of projects and programmes based on the ceiling set by the resource committee and the Finance Ministry, taking the planned projects into account, prepares the budget.

The Department of Roads expects its budget allocation to be reduced by 20-25 percent, said Shivahari Sapkota, the department spokesperson.

Besides a reduction in the budget ceiling, we have been advised not to incorporate any new projects, he said.

In the current fiscal year, the Road Department received a budget allocation of Rs124 billion. But in line with Mahats assessment, Sapkota admitted that only 32 percent of that budget had been spent so far, as most projects have stalled due to the ongoing lockdown. The lockdown, however, was only imposed on March 24, just around two months before the end of the fiscal year in mid-May.

The Ministry of Urban Development had a ceiling of Rs29 billion for the next fiscal year.

We had prepared our programmes based on the ceiling given to us, but we have been told that the revised ceiling could go down by 15 percent, said Madhusudan Adhikari, a secretary at the ministry.

According to Adhikari, his ministry will continue to implement the plan of creating urban centres along the mid-hill highways and constructing major infrastructure, including the new parliament building on the premises of Singha Durbar.

The government has been forced to lower the budget ceiling as it has been collecting far less revenue than in the previous years due to the lockdown. Customs offices are major sources of revenue for the treasury but ever since the closure of the international border, only medical goods and essential food items have come in, and these goods are either at zero or very low tariffs.

The domestic economy too has come to a standstill, affecting internal revenue collection. Income tax and value added tax have not been collected as the government decided on April 30 to allow businesses to postpone payments in light of the impact of Covid-19.

Given the shortfall in revenue collection, the government has been seeking more funds from donors, but donor economies too are predicted to contract in the aftermath of the pandemic, likely affecting the amounts they provide.

But the government is also under pressure to provide relief to the unemployed and stimulus packages to businesses.

"The government will need to roll out a raft of fiscal and monetary measures to provide credit and tax relief to companies, especially small businesses that have been hit hard by the outbreak, said economist Pyakural.

The Central Bureau of Statistics last week projected the countrys economy to grow at a meagre 2.27 percent in the current fiscal year, the lowest since the 2015-16 fiscal year when the country witnessed a growth of just 0.2 percent after experiencing devastating earthquakes in 2015 followed by an Indian trade blockade.

With economic activities battered by the ongoing lockdown and uncertainty over the end to the pandemic, the government is facing the prospect of low revenue collection in the upcoming fiscal too, prompting it to review the budget ceiling.

As of mid-April, the federal governments revenue collection had been short of its target by Rs200 billion, according to the Finance Ministry.

According to economist Pyakurel, the upcoming budget should be drafted with a clear roadmap for the next two years. A poor response to the pandemic and a failure to revive the economy could be disastrous, he said.

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Upcoming budget to put new projects on hold as the economy braces for a hit - The Kathmandu Post

ByHub staff report

With the urgent need to limit the spread of COVID-19, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, with Bloomberg Philanthropies, today launched a free online course to help train a new cadre of contact tracers to reach and assist people exposed to the virus. Taking and passing this course will be a requirement for thousands of contact tracers being hired by the state of New York to fight the pandemic.

The new course, "COVID-19 Contact Tracing," is available for registration on the Coursera platform beginning today. The course highlights how contact tracing is a key component of a public health strategy to slow the spread of COVID-19 without large-scale shutdowns and stay-at-home orders.

Through presentations by expert faculty and role plays, the course teaches the basics of interviewing people diagnosed with COVID-19, finding their close contacts who might have been exposed, and providing them advice and support for self-quarantine. Contact tracing is a public health practice that has been successful in breaking the chain of transmission of other infectious diseases, including measles and tuberculosis.

New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies and former three-term mayor of New York City, recently announced an initiative to develop a large-scale contact tracing program in New York state. The program will include a baseline of 30 contact tracers for every 100,000 residents in the state and will utilize additional tracers based on the projected number of cases in each region. The program is expected to have 6,400 to 17,000 tracers statewide depending on the projected number of cases.

"Contact tracing allows us to communicate with people infected with COVID-19, identify those who may have been exposed, and provide all of them with guidance to limit the spread of the disease," Bloomberg said. "This new training course, which we're making available online for free, will teach contact tracers how to do this work effectivelyand help cities and states across the nation undertake these critical efforts."

The new course is open to anyone in the world, whether they are interested in becoming a contact tracer or just want to understand the process. Applicants in New York state will be invited to take the course after their application is reviewed and they pass an initial interview. The interview, followed by taking the course and passing the final assessment within 72 hours, will be required to be hired into the New York state program.

Michael R. Bloomberg

Founder, Bloomberg Philanthropies

Bloomberg Philanthropies is supporting the state Department of Health with recruiting and interviewing applicants, and the Bloomberg School has developed this online curriculum to train candidates. Vital Strategies' initiative Resolve to Save Lives will provide technical and operational advising to New York state health department staff. The program will serve as an important resource to gather best practices and as a model that can be replicated across the nation.

"Testing and tracing are critical to our reopening plan, and New York is leading the nation on both fronts. We're testing more than any other state and now we're working with Bloomberg Philanthropies and Johns Hopkins to quickly build an army of tracers for our contact tracing program that can serve as a model for the rest of the nation," Cuomo said. "This innovative online training course is a key component of our program that will provide tracers with the tools to effectively trace COVID-19 cases at the scale we need to fight this pandemic."

A recent report from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School estimated that the current situation in the United States requires a new workforce of at least 100,000 contact tracers to limit the spread of COVID-19 and begin to reopen the economy.

"Controlling the spread of COVID-19 will require the hiring and training of a public health workforce in record time," said Joshua M. Sharfstein, vice dean for Public Health and Community Engagement at the Bloomberg School. "This introductory course provides a strong foundation in the core concepts of contact tracing, from how to talk to people about COVID-19 to key ethical principles."

The lead instructor of the course is Emily Gurley, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Bloomberg School. Among other contributors to the class is Bloomberg School senior research associate Tolbert Nyenswah, who was the incident commander for the response to the Ebola outbreak in Liberia.

The contact tracing course, which takes six hours to complete, is divided into five sections or "modules." The course covers:

"We hope the excellent content and easy accessibility of this virtual training program can contribute to achieving the speed and scale required to get the New York State program up and running," said Kelly Henning, who leads the Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Health program. "We believe it also can be useful for health departments around the country and around the world eager to aggressively expand contact tracing."

Added Bloomberg School Dean Ellen J. MacKenzie: "The Bloomberg School of Public Health has been at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19 since the beginning, helping leaders and the public understand and respond to this pandemic with the best available science and evidence. Massive contact tracing is a critical component of our recovery. We are thrilled to bring our deep expertise on this important public health practice, as well as our experience in industry-leading online teaching, to the training and curriculum for this groundbreaking effort."

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Johns Hopkins launches online course to train army of contact tracers to slow spread of COVID-19 - The Hub at Johns Hopkins