How can you track community spread of COVID-19 in your area?

How can you track community spread of COVID-19 in your area? Experts weighed in on how community spread can be measured and monitored, and what you should do if cases increase in your area. YahooNews

When it comes to measuring the prevalence of the coronavirus, one term frequently comes up: community spread.

According to Dr. Ted Cohen, an infectious disease epidemiologist and professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health in New Haven, Connecticut, community spread is an "informal" medical term that is used when a particular pathogen travels through a community and is not confined to a specific area. The phenomenon isn't specific to the coronavirus, it can apply to any infectious disease.

"When a pathogen is spreading in communities, it means we're seeing sort of a new phase of the epidemic," he explained.

Dr. Anne Liu, an infectious disease physician at Stanford Health Care in Palo Alto, California, said that high levels of community spread can indicate a virus is circulating in a community.

"The likelihood of (community spread) is much higher in communities where there are more cases and where there is less mask-wearing, where there's more mingling of humans in higher-risk situations," she said.There's not one number or statistic that lets people easily track community spread, according to Liu, but taking a look at a variety of other metrics can help people understand what the situation looks like in their area.

"Depending on where you live, the local Department of Public Health is hopefully posting a lot of metrics online on what they're finding in terms of number of positive cases compared to the (amount) of testing done," Liu said.

It's also useful to understand the density of cases within a population: Liu recommends looking at the number of new cases diagnosed per day per 100,000 people. Again, there's not one number to watch for, Liu stressed. ...