Ricketts announces state testing plan

On April 21, Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts announced a plan for testing for COVID-19. A public-private partnership will expand testing over several weeks.

Per program guidelines, residents will be able to enlist in the program to take an assessment, get tested and track health.

"I am excited to roll out our Test Nebraska initiative to accelerate our ability to defeat the virus and get Nebraskans back to work," Ricketts said during a press conference. "Having good data will give us the confidence we need to move forward."

As of April 27, nearly 89,000 Nebraskans had completed an online assessment.

The state has partnered with Xant, Nomi Health, Qualtrics and Domo, to launch the program.

All Nebraskans are welcome to participate in the #TestNebraskaChallenge.

Testing is free. State and federal government will cover fees for testing, according to Josh James, founder and chief executive officer of Domo, a data visualization cloud software company.

Mark Newman, founder and chief executive officer of Nomi Health, said the program works in three parts.

Signup is available at TestNebraska.com.

The first part of the process is to answer several questions to determine current risk and provide the state health department insight into residents' collective health.

Accurate, evidence-based information on COVID-19 will be included.

"This helps our team and state epidemiologists to gauge the general health of various communities and to decide where to set up testing sites," Newman said.

He expects testing services to be set up in various locations across the state in the next two to five weeks.

"Our testing sites will have multiple kits and multiple test options," Newman said.

Testing will be prioritized for individuals who currently have symptoms, have interacted with someone who previously tested positive or have visited places where COVID-19 is widespread.

Testing will be scheduled and individuals receiving tests will be directed to a drive-thru location.

Individuals who have been assessed will receive a follow-up visit and be asked to answer two or three questions to track their well-being.

Dave Elkington, founder and chairman of Xant, said the initiative started in Utah when residents decided "we couldn't expect our government to take care of everything on its own.

"We started a public-private partnership where a number of companies came togehter to leverage their technologies and relationships to solve this testing capacity problem," Elkington said.

The Utah program has been up and running for three weeks and completed 3,000 tests in one day.

He said the goal of the program is not merely to determine if people are infected or not.

"We want to restore confidence so that people can get back to work, spend time with family and friends and resume their usual day-to-day activities."

Ryan Smith, chief executive officer and co-founder of Qualtrics, a software platform, said his company has worked with Nebraska in higher education "for a while now."

"We run one of the largest assessment firms in the world," he said.

Nebraska citizens can take the assessment, get tested quickly and stay up-to-date on how they are doing with Test Nebraska, according to Smith.

"All of the data collected is protected with the highest level of security," Smith said.

Data collected will assist with reopening the state's economy and society.

"We're also providing a crisis command center to give the state the real-time information about what's taking place here in Nebraska," James said.

Rickets said individuals who sign up are asked to challenge five friends, via social media, to do the same.