• Skip to Content
  • Skip to Main Navigation
  • Skip to Search

Indiana University Indiana University IU

Open Search
  • Who We Are
    • Leadership
      • Past Leadership
    • Advisory Boards
    • Researchers
      • Affiliates
    • Staff
    • Vision & Mission
    • Careers
  • Who We Work With
    • Businesses and Nonprofits
    • Educators
    • Faculty
      • EPIC Request for Applications
      • Research development
    • Local Governments
      • ERI Toolkit
      • Hoosier Resilience Index
      • Webinars
      • Beat the Heat
    • Residents
      • Hoosier Resilience Heroes
    • Students
  • Research
    • Wildlife Migration
    • Pests and Invasive Species
    • Climate and Water Systems
    • Forests and Green Infrastructure
    • Human Impacts and Attitudes
    • Communication, Education, and Outreach
  • Tools & Resources
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events
    • Newsletters
  • Support Our Work
    • Individuals and Families
    • Corporations
    • Foundations
    • Ways to Give
    • Contact
  • Contact
  • Donate

Environmental Resilience Institute
Part of the Prepared for Environmental Change Grand Challenge

  • Home
  • Who We Are
    • Leadership
    • Advisory Boards
    • Researchers
    • Staff
    • Vision & Mission
    • Careers
  • Who We Work With
    • Businesses and Nonprofits
    • Educators
    • Faculty
    • Local Governments
    • Residents
    • Students
  • Research
    • Wildlife Migration
    • Pests and Invasive Species
    • Climate and Water Systems
    • Forests and Green Infrastructure
    • Human Impacts and Attitudes
    • Communication, Education, and Outreach
  • Tools & Resources
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events
    • Newsletters
  • Support Our Work
    • Individuals and Families
    • Corporations
    • Foundations
    • Ways to Give
    • Contact
  • Search
  • Contact
  • Donate
  • Home
  • News & Events
  • News
  • Archive
  • 2020
  • New York City is fighting COVID block by block. Is it working?

New York City is fighting COVID block by block. Is it working?

By: Daily Nurse

Monday, November 23, 2020

Decorative - a headshot of Ana Bento
Ana Bento

“Micro-clusters” of Covid cases are now the focus in New York City’s battle against the pandemic. After a devastating spring in which COVID-19 took over 20,000 lives across its five boroughs, city public health officials and legislators have taken the fight against the virus to the streets. The health department now monitors micro-clusters as they pop up in city neighborhoods. As zip code areas are too imprecise in a metropolis of nearly 8.4 million people, officials track micro-clusters block by block and shut down hotspots to choke off the virus before it has a chance to set the city on fire again. Using a “focus zone” system, the city enforces aggressive lock-down restrictions on gatherings and businesses in hotspot red zones, and when a red zone is densely populated, more moderate restrictions are imposed in adjacent orange or yellow “buffer zone” areas to isolate the hotspots and prevent the virus from spreading to nearby neighborhoods.

Governor Cuomo’s micro-cluster tracking strategy allows for flexible, rapid responses to sudden outbreaks. As Thomas Tsai, a health policy expert at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, explained to Stat News: “Social distancing policy is not an on/off switch — this is a dial that needs to be calibrated to the temperature.” In the same article, Ana Bento, a disease ecologist at Indiana University elaborated, “The idea is to… from what we know, create more efficient and evidence-based types of lockdowns. In different cities and in different states, these lockdowns may look very different from each other.”

Read the full article

Environmental Resilience Institute Part of the Prepared for Environmental Change Grand Challenge resources

  • Environmental Resilience Institute Toolkit (ERIT)
  • Hoosier Resilience Index
  • Webinars

Additional links and resources

  • ERI INTRANET
  • GRAND CHALLENGES
Donation button to Give Now to Environmental Resilience Institute
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn

Indiana University

Accessibility | Privacy Notice | Copyright © 2022 The Trustees of Indiana University

  • Who We Are
    • Leadership
      • Past Leadership
    • Advisory Boards
    • Researchers
      • Affiliates
    • Staff
    • Vision & Mission
    • Careers
  • Who We Work With
    • Businesses and Nonprofits
    • Educators
    • Faculty
      • EPIC Request for Applications
      • Research development
    • Local Governments
      • ERI Toolkit
      • Hoosier Resilience Index
      • Webinars
      • Beat the Heat
    • Residents
      • Hoosier Resilience Heroes
    • Students
  • Research
    • Wildlife Migration
    • Pests and Invasive Species
    • Climate and Water Systems
    • Forests and Green Infrastructure
    • Human Impacts and Attitudes
    • Communication, Education, and Outreach
  • Tools & Resources
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events
    • Newsletters
  • Support Our Work
    • Individuals and Families
    • Corporations
    • Foundations
    • Ways to Give
    • Contact
  • Contact
  • Donate