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COVID-19 Response

On January 22, 2020, CSTE activated its Concept of Operations (ConOps) Plan in response to the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. Like
all of the organization’s work, science and equity guided the effort. The resulting pandemic presented challenges unlike those ever faced before at
the local, state, tribal, territorial, and federal levels, so CSTE revamped its daily operations to meet the need. The National Office went 100% virtual
in March 2020, but continued to host hundreds of conference calls and webinars, facilitate bidirectional information sharing, stand up ad hoc
workgroups, and inform national and jurisdictional response strategies. A summary of programmatic activities from January 2020–January 2021 is
detailed below, not including CSTE’s policy, advocacy, and communications endeavors.

Convenings (APHL) COVID-19 Core Group calls for coordination on emerging
epi-lab issues associated with the pandemic response.
• Facilitated rapid bidirectional communications between Centers
• Hosted weekly CSTE Occupational Health (OH) COVID-19 calls
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Incident Management
with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
System (IMS) response and CSTE members by sharing information,
(NIOSH) and CSTE’s Occupational Health Subcommittee members
resources, and guidance documents and providing feedback to
from April 2020–August 2020. The group currently convenes on a
inform response strategies and emerging response needs.
monthly basis.
• Hosted daily internal COVID-19 response coordination briefings to
• Hosted biweekly COVID-19 Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAI)
coordinate CSTE staff efforts in support of the pandemic response.
Listening Sessions with CDC’s Division of Healthcare
• Hosted weekly COVID-19 All State Epi calls to discuss emerging
Quality Promotion and CSTE’s HAI Subcommittee.
issues and response-related needs with State Epidemiologists,
• Hosted biweekly CDC/APHL/CSTE COVID-19
City and Large Urban Area Epidemiologists (CLUE), and the CSTE
Serology and Immunity Workgroup calls
Executive Board.
to discuss seroprevalence studies
• Hosted weekly CDC/CSTE COVID-19 Core Group calls to provide
approaches and issues around the
rapid feedback on national response strategies, pre-decisional
interpretation of serology results
guidance documents, resources, and tools.
and the utility for understanding
• Hosted weekly CDC/CSTE/Association of Public Health Laboratories
disease burden.

Credit: Hannah A Bullock; Azaibi Tamin (CDC)

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