To understand COVID’s spread in Dallas-Fort Worth, 45,000 will be tested in study
To better understand the novel coronavirus’ prevalence among racial groups and occupations, approximately 45,000 Dallas-Fort Worth residents will be tested as part of a study from UT Southwestern Medical Center and Texas Health Resources.
The “DFW COVID-19 Prevalence Study,” announced Friday, aims to test thousands of residents from Dallas and Tarrant counties for COVID-19 and follow them over time to understand how their immune responses evolve and where hot spots are emerging throughout the community.
UT Southwestern Medical Center and Texas Health Resources will collaborate to set up testing sites across both counties, and testing will be at no cost to the participants. The total cost of the study is $10.7 million, with the budget split between the counties, Stephen O’Brien, a spokesman for Texas Health Resources, said.
It will be funded, in part, by the counties, the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth and members of the business and philanthropic communities, including Lyda Hill Philanthropies, O’Brien said.
“A deeper understanding of who is most exposed and how the virus is spreading will help policy makers as well as civic and business leaders to formulate effective mitigation and containment strategies and highlight where we have opportunities to improve the health of local communities through equitable public health strategies,” Daniel K. Podolsky, the president of UT Southwestern, said in a statement.
To assess COVID-19 related risk factors across ethnicities, the study aims to recruit an equal number of participants from the counties’ three most common racial and ethnic groups: white, Black, and Hispanic.
New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that Black and Latino residents across the U.S. are three times as likely to become infected with COVID-19 compared to their white neighbors, and nearly twice as likely to die from the virus, according to The New York Times.
“Why are certain ZIP codes and different groups within those ZIP codes impacted more than others? We really want a more granular answer to that to question,” said Andrew Masica, Texas Health’s chief medical officer of reliable health and the study’s co-principal investigator.
An invitation will be mailed to 30,000 randomly selected households based on geography and ZIP code. Those who choose to participate in the study will then fill out a survey with demographic info on their household and risk factors.
From there, participants will schedule an appointment at a UT Southwestern or Texas Health Resources test site where they will be tested for a current COVID-19 infection and for coronavirus antibodies — which can indicate that a person has recovered from the virus, even if he or she was not exhibiting symptoms.
Those who test positive for COVID-19 will be connected with a health provider if they don’t already have one. Their results will be reported to their local health department, which will also handle contact tracing — something Tarrant County has struggled to keep up with amid the recent surge in cases.
Patients who test positive and a random sample of patients who tested negative will be tested for antibodies at six months and then again at 12 to better understand how long antibodies may last in their systems, Masica said.
Additionally, the study will assess the prevalence of COVID-19 in approximately 14,000 workers who are in jobs at higher risk of exposure, like grocery store clerks and airline employees.
With cases and hospitalizations of patients with COVID-19 at an all-time high, Masica said the goal is for the first set of data samples to be collected over the next four months, with the hope that results can be released on a monthly basis and used to inform policy and recommendations locally for how to adjust behavior or target areas to curb the virus’ spread.
“We need to better understand the exposure of COVID-19 in our local communities so we can better intervene, limit its spread, and save lives,” Amit Singal, an associate professor of Internal Medicine and Population and Data Sciences who is co-leading the study, said in a statement.
Tarrant County residents are required to wear face masks in public. Gatherings of more than 10 people require approval, bars are closed and restaurants are at 50% capacity. And social distancing measures will likely look different six months from now, shaping the study’s results.
“It will provide different time windows, and then we’ll be able to look at the patterns of positivity rates and antibody rates in relationship to some of the policy interventions that were put in place,” Masica said.
In Texas and Tarrant County, a comprehensive picture on the virus’ effect on different racial groups is difficult to piece together. The state does not mandate the reporting of demographic data when reporting COVID-19 cases, and the data it does receive from local health departments can be incomplete.
For example, in Tarrant County, about 25% of cases lack data on the person’s race. Of the cases where demographic data was reported, 37% were Hispanic, 20% were white, 14% were Black, 3% were Asian or Pacific Islander and less than 1% were listed as “other,” as of Thursday.
Meanwhile, about 29.5% of Tarrant County’s residents are Hispanic, 72.6% are white, 17.9% are Black, and 5.8% are Asian, according to 2019 U.S. Census Bureau estimates.
Testing and collecting data firsthand will help give researchers a fuller picture, and fill the gaps that do exist.
“The nature of the data that has been collected to this point, there are some potential biases in it, in terms of the people that have sought testing have generally been symptomatic or it’s been easier for them to access testing,” Masica said. “So at this stage, we truly don’t have a random sample from a broad cross-cutting section of the population.”
The Texas Health and Human Services Commission also plans to launch a study to assess the virus’ impact on vulnerable populations across the state, including looking at factors such as race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and more. Last month, Texas also pledged to ramp up testing in minority communities and underserved areas.
This story was originally published July 10, 2020 at 12:00 PM.
