At the beginning of April, Utah tech advocacy group Silicon Slopes partnered with the Utah Health Department, the state's COVID-19 Task Force, and Utah health care providers to roll out an initiative to fast-track coronavirus assessments and testing. TestUtah.com is a website that facilitates people's current needs, allowing those concerned or experiencing symptoms to go online and fill out a questionnaire to see if they should get a test. It then gives users a QR code and an appointment slot.
Since debuting TestUtah.com on April 2, the program has performed over 50,0000 individual online assessments of Utah residents, referred over 2,600 respondents for testing while helping coordinate the testing of more than half of those people, and returned almost 800 completed results. All Utahns are encouraged to take the assessment regardless of if they're experiencing symptoms or not.
The program hopes to track not only the virus but also trace efforts to help slow the spread of the outbreak across the state. Soon, the program will rollout randomized testing to diagnose asymptomatic carriers of the disease. This is similar to the approach used in South Korea, where the spread of the coronavirus was contained.
"This really tracks back to the Silicon Slopes community recognizing that we needed to bring our collective skill set to bear on COVID-19," said Silicon Slopes Executive Director Clint Betts. "We got the ball rolling on the assessment website, supply chain issues and reached out to Governor Gary Herbert, Lieutenant Governor Spencer Cox, the health department and health care providers ... and it's been this amazing collaboration that's brought us to this point."
The initiative has set up two drive-thru testing centers with a goal to have 10-15 testing centers functioning throughout the state over the next few weeks. Each site, Betts said, will have the capacity to collect 300-500 tests per day. Moreover, a partnership with Salt Lake-based medical diagnostics company Co-Diagnostics will allow results to be delivered within a 24-48 hour window.
"We're getting a lot of inquiries, including from some of our biggest states, asking us how we can help them replicate the TestUtah.com model," Betts said. "What we're doing here is really unique ... and the key to it all has been an amazing collaboration."
The effort is a part of a broader Silicon Slopes initiative to mobilize the tech community to fight COVID-19 with SlopesServes.com. Here, members of the community can find business resources, donate to the COVID-19 Community Response Fund, volunteer, and donate medical supplies.
