What if, there was a way to privately determine your personal risk of contracting COVID-19, based on your personal actions and behaviors? There is such a tool, available online called the CV-19 CheckUp, powered by BellAge and offered free by Oasis at http://www.oasisnet.org/covid/.
“It helps you understand your personal risks of getting COVID, of spreading it to others, and how serious it might be, based on how you answer questions about your health and habits,” Paul Weiss, president of the Oasis Institute, said. It takes about 10 minutes or less to complete.
Older people and minority populations have been hit hard by COVID-19.
“Our focus is that those two communities get access to the CV-19 CheckUp – that know about it and learn about behavior mitigations,” Weiss said. “We are primarily focused on older adults, but we have a very acute interest in the health of older adults in north St. Louis County.”
In the past couple of years Oasis has reached into the North County community to offer programming.
“Those are the communities in St. Louis that have, in many ways, been most affected by COVID-19, in terms of the serious symptoms, and have been most dislocated by social isolation and the loss of a lot of our resources right now in the middle of this pandemic.”
Oasis received CARES Act funding from St. Louis County to offer the assessment. Weiss said no personally identifiable data is requested or stored, but it does ask health and behavior questions that allow the algorithm to make the assessment.
“The only data this produces is population-based data for that community, but it’s anonymized,” Weiss said. “No one knows you took the test, specifically, no one knows who you are, and your results are yours alone.
“The CV-19 CheckUp actually doesn’t get the results that you get. That’s not data that’s stored.”
And the imaginary “COVID police” will not come knocking at your door. No one knows you took the CV-19 CheckUp unless you tell them.
“All that’s stored is the behavior data by ZIP code and IP address, but we don’t know who this person is, we don’t know what their address is. We don’t know anything about them,” Weiss said. “It’s completely anonymous.”
Certain demographic data can be used to help determine where potential health services and resources should go in fighting the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’ll share information with St. Louis County about, as people are taking this test, here’s where people probably have the biggest risk of severe outcomes. That information we can give generally by community,” Weiss said. “If you’re going to deploy primary health physicians to support populations that don’t have access to primary care, we will tell you where the biggest risks are of negative outcomes.”
In order to get the most accurate assessment of your personal risk, you have to be honest with yourself as you answer the questions about your activities and behavior – no one is looking, remember?
“There is demographic information, whether or not you smoke, things like that, that will determine what your risk is of severe symptomology,” he said. “Whether or not you get real sick from COVID depends on this constellation of both risk factors and behaviors.”
After taking my own assessment on a desktop, the link was sent to individuals of different ages and living environments to get their thoughts on the tool.
“Very thorough,” a 40s retiree in Florissant said after taking the assessment on his mobile device.
The CV-10 CheckUp is optimized to work on any device that is internet enabled.
One 50-year-old completed the checkup on a tablet and had no problems with the questions or navigation.
A 40s educator in the county tried it and said, “I liked it. Fast, easy and gives you a good view of risk, which makes you think about how to improve your score.”
That’s one of the best outcomes from taking the assessment – taking action to improve what you can to keep yourself and others out of harm’s way from the new coronavirus.
“I thought it was simple and easy to take,” a 30s Clayton salon owner said about taking the assessment on a cell phone. “I didn’t think it was too invasive.”
A Kaiser Family Foundation KFF Health Tracking Poll in July finds that most U.S. adults feel the worst effects of the pandemic are yet to come, and 53% of U.S. adults indicate that worry and stress related to the coronavirus pandemic is taking a negative emotional toll on their mental health.
The CV-19 CheckUp does ask a couple questions about feelings of anxiety, depression or loneliness due to isolation because of the pandemic. Weiss says it is a real concern, particularly among older adults.
“One of the things we are we worried about in the COVID-19 era, we’re worried about older adults feeling really isolated,” Weiss said. “Because they’ve been told to stay alone and have been told to be isolated, and older adults are already socially isolated, it’s already a major health risk.”
One north St. Louis County woman in her 70s who is in the vulnerable category for a potential tough go with COVID-19 due to age and health history, previously did not require young love ones who visited her to wear masks. A relative assisted her with taking the CV-19 CheckUp, and she was surprised to see that had higher than comfortable risk of getting COVID-19. “She said she’s going to start requiring masks,” her relative said.
“One of the things we are encouraging people to do is take the test for someone else. You can call them on the phone and take the test for them and give them the results,” Weiss said. “Take this test with and for a loved one who is not technologically capable of doing it themselves.”
Weiss said the CV-19 CheckUp launched last week and will be available until the end of this year at http://www.oasisnet.org/covid/.
For other Oasis programs, go online to oasisnet.org or visit its virtual learning site, Oasis Everywhere at oasiseverywhere.org.