Critical Releases in Homeland Security: July 29, 2020

From the Executive Summary: "As communities relax stay-at-home orders and ramp up testing, the public health system is seeing increases in COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] cases. Until vaccines are broadly available, the primary ways of preventing transmission of COVID-19 include interventions such as case investigation, contact tracing, social distancing, and isolation and quarantine. [...] An extensive and swift expansion of the case investigation and contact tracing workforce--paired with continuous evaluation to ensure effectiveness--is needed to adequately respond to rising caseloads and rapid investigation cycles. To complement this time-tested, workforce-based solution, technology companies have been engaging with various public health experts to develop new tools that could aid in COVID-19 response efforts. [...] This guide aims to help health officials think through critical functionalities needed for case investigations and contact tracing, technological options, and issues of implementation in adopting these technologies. It also addresses the latest topic of focus: the Apple|Google exposure notification application programming interface. The background and key considerations included are intended to inform decision-making for technology-enabled enhancement of case investigation and contact tracing capacity."

From the Overview: "The nation is clearly falling short of the commitment, focus and initiative needed to defeat Covid-19 [coronavirus disease 2019]. Infection rates are hitting record highs nationally and in more than a dozen southern and western states. Tests are still perilously hard to come by in regions where demand is surging. Testing bottlenecks persist in many of the nation's labs. We lack central coordinating authorities even at the state level. In much of the country essential contact tracing systems are nascent at best. The public is still not united in its response to the lethal virus, with large numbers refusing to take precautionary steps and dubious over the need for more testing."

From the Introduction: "Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a newly emergent human disease caused by a naturally arising, novel coronavirus--the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The virus spreads easily from person to person through respiratory droplets, and infection typically causes fever, loss of taste or smell, shortness of breath, a dry cough, and/or other symptoms and complications associated with COVID-19. The ease with which the virus spreads and the virus's ability to be transmitted by asymptomatic individuals have caused possibly the most severe worldwide infectious disease pandemic of the modern age. More than 100,000 Americans died from COVID-19 within the first four months of the pandemic, contributing to more than 350,000 deaths worldwide in the same time period."

From the Preface: "When Future Workforce Now: Reimagining Workforce Policy in the Age of Disruption launched in 2018, emerging technologies were rapidly shifting expectations of workers. Meanwhile, many employers struggled to retain talent amid a tight labor market fueled by a decade of economic expansion. Leaders around the globe were and still are adapting to these global forces. Future Workforce Now was launched to assess the impacts of technological disruptions on work, workers and workplaces and their implications for state policy. After more than a year of research and consultation with experts and state leaders, this guide offers governors and state policymakers a comprehensive toolkit for building a technologically resilient workforce ready to thrive in an evolving economy. This publication was written before the COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] outbreak and associated social and economic shocks. The world has since entered an entirely new state of disruption that will only accelerate the trends previously affecting the future of work and workers. This new context reinforces the findings of the Future Workforce Now initiative and underscores the urgency of the policy transformations that should be implemented as part of a systemwide, resilient education and workforce development agenda. States face unprecedented challenges, but leaders should not overlook the opportunity to use the innovations this guide identifies and those developed during the global pandemic."