Door-to-door tests help track COVID-19’s spread in one Oregon town
Through mid-May, researchers will be knocking on doors in Corvallis, Ore., and asking people inside their homes if they’d agree to a coronavirus test. These door-to-door tests, which began on April 19, may be the first of their kind in the country, the scientists say, and will help determine whether people currently have the virus that causes COVID-19. The tests promise to provide an accurate estimate of infection rates in the college town of about 60,000 people. Preliminary results suggest that approximately 2 in 1,000 people in Corvallis had SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, when they were tested over the weekend of April 25 and 26, researchers report May 7. That rate is lower than estimates from some other places in the United States and globally, and lower than at other time points during the pandemic, but still high enough to be concerned about, the team says. The weekends of testing involve asking families to swab their noses and put the samples...