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The Johnson County Department of Health and Environment on Tuesday launched a population health survey on COVID-19 symptoms, part of an effort to gain a better understanding of how widespread infection rates here might be.
The voluntary survey will be open through Friday, April 10 at 10 a.m. Participants will be “asked to do this same survey several more times in the next few weeks in order to compare results,” according to JCDHE.
The survey asks residents to share information about:
- Whether they are experiencing possible symptoms of coronavirus infection
- Their age, sex, ethnicity and zip code
- Contact information
The county says all of the information will be kept confidential by JCDHE and will only be used to conduct an analysis on community spread of the virus. JCDHE requests that each member of a household complete the survey.
“Please fill out the survey accurately and completely,” said JCDHE Director Sanmi Areola. “Completing the survey is voluntary, but we ask that as many people as possible participate to get a good picture of how the coronavirus is spreading in the community.”
The survey is among the tools JCDHE is employing to stem the spread of the disease, which has killed 10 people in Johnson County so far. The county government has for weeks now been exploring avenues for increasing testing for the disease, but the inability to get needed supplies has hampered those efforts. The county commission on Monday heard from Areola that JCDHE expected 700 testing swabs to arrive shortly, and that those would be used on high-risk groups. But those supplies are well short of the 4,000 test kits the county had hoped to procure.
Anyone with questions about the effort can contact the COVID-19 community hotline at 913-715-2819.
