A phased return from social distancing, universal testing and contact tracing are key.”That will save lives,” says Neil Mehta, PSC Faculty Associate and a public health professor who specializes in demographics and epidemiology. “Because if we do unfortunately infect a colleague at work, and they’re living with their elderly parents or grandparents, then we can identify that that colleague’s risk, and potentially save the lives of them or their families. So it’s another tool in our arsenal to combat the virus and save lives.”And in order to have contact tracing, you also need universal testing. Our capabilities there as a state are definitely expanding, and the state just announced they’ll start testing essential employees even if they aren’t symptomatic. But we’re still not at universal testing.”We need more testing and we need more tracing,” Mehta says. “The testing and tracing, these should become household words. Contact tracing and testing that will really, really help us sort of formulate policies that can sort of open our economy up again.”

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