COLUMBUS, Ohio - The Ohio Department of Health plans to randomly sample Ohio’s population for the coronavirus, which will provide much needed information of how extensive COVID-19 is in the state.

The lack of available tests has stymied officials’ abilities to estimate how many Ohioans have become infected with the illness, which has no available vaccine. State officials have closed schools, restaurants and bars and have ordered Ohioans to stay at home, saying the highly infectious disease is among us.

Yet at this time it’s unknown how pervasive it is.

During Saturday’s daily COVID-19 briefing, Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton announced a team will be made up of amateur epidemiologists, equipped with technology, to take on the effort. They’ll start with a random sample of 100 asymptomatic people.

“We’re trying to get a better sense of who’s out there, what’s going on in the general population,” she said.

Acton didn’t say exactly when that work would start or be completed.

Massachusetts has a similar effort underway with Boston nonprofit Partners in Health, where about 1,000 people are to start contact tracing, which is a strategy of pinpointing the source of an infection, then people who have been in close contact with them and referring some of them to be tested.

“We’ve also talked to some of those same people,” Acton said.

To take the sample and figure out how much of the general population has coronavirus will require modeling.

“I think that will help us understand a better picture of who is truly positive,” she said.

Acton said that the state effort is separate from discussions she’s having with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which will send a team to rural Ohio -- where testing capacity is limited, to get population data.

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