The Baseline COVID-19 Program releases guide for establishing community testing

Streamlining COVID-19 screening, testing, and return of results is a significant challenge nationwide. The California community-based COVID-19 testing program with support from Verily’s Project Baseline has rapidly and responsibly rolled out four testing sites in two weeks, testing more than 3700 individuals to-date*. Our team has learned a lot in the early days of this program and has established best practices to inform development of additional testing sites. We are now sharing these learnings to support other organizations’ efforts, who may find the information useful, as they expand testing within their own communities. 

The COVID-19 Community-Based Testing Program Guide is designed to help government officials, public health departments, and local communities establish drive-through testing sites, and includes instructions for integrating with the Baseline COVID-19 Program.

The guide consists of lessons we believe may help communities that are under immense pressure to quickly establish testing. The COVID-19 Community-Based Testing Program Guide includes a framework for:

• Launching sites within a one-week timeframe
• Optimizing site operations for more efficient testing, while maintaining safety
• Creating a more automated, integrated process that spans dynamic screening that can be adjusted based on the latest epidemiology, scheduling, testing, and delivery of results

The COVID-19 Community-Based Testing Program Guide is the result of collaboration between Verily’s Project Baseline team of engineers, scientists, clinical operations specialists, and more, and the California Department of Public of Health (CDPH), California Department of Health and Human Services (CDHHS), California Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) and county and city departments of public health. The guide also includes clinical and operational input from Stanford Medicine, based on its testing protocols and experience addressing COVID-19. We will continue to update the document as we iterate, learn, and launch additional sites. 

To learn more about the Baseline COVID-19 Program, visit us at projectbaseline.com/studies/covid-19 and follow along with us on Twitter @verilylifesci.

* Based on data collected as of 3/28/20.