Hawai‘i COVID Contact Tracking Survey Estimates Spread and Containment Potential

Pacific Urban Resilience Lab today released their initial estimates of spreading and containment potential for COVID-19 in Hawaiʻi.

This research is based on self-reported behaviors by approximately 11,000 Hawaiʻi residents who participated in an electronic survey during the last week of March 2020.

Questions in the survey included “do you live in the same household as someone who is exhibiting symptoms or is confirmed to have COVID-19;” and “have you or members of your household returned from a trip within the last 14 days.” Other questions pertained to travel behavior, quarantine, sheltering, transportation mode, and more.

“We have received an overwhelming response from the Hawaiʻi community – more than 11,000 surveys were completed in just five days — to support our efforts to track the spread of COVID-19 throughout our state,” said Karl Kim, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at University of Hawaiʻi. “We are grateful for the aloha spirit of the people who responded. These results are a source of optimism and caution. There are many serious ‘distancers’ but there are also potential ‘spreaders’ who continue to go to work or to gatherings with family and friends.”

Key takeaways from this initial analysis include:

Results are preliminary, and should not be interpreted as representative across Hawaiʻi households. “We are continually working to improve the representativeness of our sampling, and will be building more advanced geospatial and temporal models to better isolate the sick, infected, spreaders and distancers,” said Kim.

To learn more about contact tracking or to complete the Hawaiʻi COVID Contact Tracking Survey visit www.hawaiifightscovid.org/. All data will be kept confidential in a secure database.

More information on the results of the Hawaiʻi COVID Contact Tracking Survey will be posted by the Hawaiʻi Data Collaborative in the coming days at www.hawaiidata.org/covid19.