Guest writers

OPINION | CAM PATTERSON AND MARK WILLIAMS: A safer future

Pandemic modeling saves lives

Like predicting the path of a hurricane, predicting the spread of a virus in a pandemic is a challenging endeavor fraught with multiple variables and unknowns. And like hurricane predictions, pandemic modeling helps us plan and prepare, ultimately saving lives.

In March, faculty and researchers at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) started work on a predictive model to anticipate how the covid-19 pandemic might impact Arkansas, initially to determine where the need for personal protective equipment (PPE) would be greatest for the next two weeks. Big endeavors sometimes start with comparatively small goals in mind.

That initial model helped Arkansas allocate PPE efficiently. Gov. Asa Hutchinson found the model helpful and asked us to continue our work, collaborating with the Arkansas Department of Health. Soon, our team also added medium- and long-term projections to covid-19 modeling reports updated every two weeks.

Because more is known about short-term conditions, accurate modeling presents fewer challenges. It's the difference between determining when a hurricane currently forming will make landfall and estimating how many hurricanes will make landfall during the season.

UAMS' short-term projections have been largely accurate. Our forecasts generally vary from the actual numbers by 2 percent to 3 percent. The 15-day forecast in the Nov. 6 report was for 112,101 cumulative confirmed cases by Nov. 16, around 6.5 percent fewer than the 120,008 confirmed cases reported, and an underestimation that strongly indicates an unexpected increase in the upward trend. While the medium- and long-term modeling has naturally had a wider margin of error, those more-distant projections still help leaders plan how to respond to conditions in Arkansas.

As we learn more about covid-19, its spread and its effect on the health of Arkansans, our modeling will continue to be adjusted and perfected. UAMS' covid-19 projections have and will continue to become increasingly accurate in the same way our clinical approaches to the disease have improved with new treatments, therapies and practices.

UAMS has a mission of patient care, education and research. Our disciplined focus in each of these areas is helping us contain--and ultimately, defeat--the virus that causes covid-19.

Looking ahead, we anticipate that one or more of the vaccines being developed in the United States and overseas will prove effective. When supplies of the vaccine are sufficient for distribution, we should see a decline of new cases and the risk of the disease diminish.

But once an effective vaccine is

announced, the covid-19 threat to public health won't immediately go away. Leaders must remind Arkansans to continue to social distance, wear face masks, avoid large gatherings and limit contacts with others outside their households. A return to something like life before the pandemic will only be possible once most of us are vaccinated, a months-long process.

Governor Hutchinson and his administration have done an excellent job of modeling the best practices of mask-wearing and social-distancing. The governor has been a diligent advocate for those practices, encouraging Arkansans to engage in them, too.

Early in the pandemic, he ordered the closing of schools, many businesses and other public places. That quick action slowed the early spread of covid-19. Those decisions were not easy ones or made lightly, and they bought needed time for the state's health-care work force to respond to the crisis without being overwhelmed.

Arkansas implemented and expanded covid-19 testing in the following months. Robust testing is essential for determining how to respond to new cases and outbreaks. Testing results are key to UAMS' modeling, too. The Health Department continues to supply our scientists with the timely data they need for that work. That Arkansas-specific data has been of a quality even higher than that used in most national models.

Finally, Governor Hutchinson has managed the economic fallout from the temporary closures of businesses in the spring in such a way that jobless rates have been below national averages: 6.2 percent in October for Arkansas compared to 6.9 percent nationally.

The economic benefit of the state's lower jobless rate is easy to understand. Less obvious is the impact on public health. It means more Arkansans in the work force have been able to retain their employer-based health insurance during this public health crisis.

UAMS, Governor Hutchinson, the Arkansas General Assembly, the CARES Act Steering Committee, and the state of Arkansas are committed to fighting covid-19. The predictive modeling done at UAMS is critical to the success of that fight. None of us at UAMS will rest until the threat is contained and all of us are again safe from it.

We are all in this together, and working together, we can navigate through this crisis to a safer, prosperous future for Arkansas.

--–––––v–––––--

Cam Patterson, M.D., MBA, is UAMS chancellor and CEO of UAMS Health; Mark Williams, Ph.D., is dean of the UAMS Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health.

Upcoming Events