Symptom-Based Markers for COVID-19 Transmission

One important approach for decreasing COVID-19 transmission in healthcare settings is to
prevent healthcare professionals from working while ill. Currently, facilities are asking
screening questions and measuring temperatures to help identify symptomatic healthcare
professionals and exclude them from providing patient care. Simulations can be used to
inform the effectiveness of different screening approaches, but the results of these
simulations depend upon the effectiveness of the intervention, e.g., the ability to
identify healthcare professionals on their way to work, or to study the impact of
healthcare professionals returning to work too early. Thus, simulations must necessarily
depend upon realistic disease parameters: for example, it is suspected that a non-trivial
proportion of patients with COVID-19 may be asymptomatic or have minimal symptoms, but
the relative size of the asymptomatic subpopulation is unknown.

The plan for this study is to develop a method for granular measurement of twice-daily
symptoms from healthcare professionals and other research subjects of similar ages. After
being diagnosed, the goal is to determine what symptoms participants have and how long
they have had them. This will be done using a previously-developed bidirectional texting
platform to query participants about symptoms at least twice a day for ten days post
diagnosis. Participants will be asked about subjective symptoms, including fevers,
chills, cough, shortness of breath, fatigue, gastrointestinal symptoms, etc. They will
also take their temperature twice daily during the recovery period, which will help
determine the effectiveness of screening based on symptoms and/or thermometer readings.