The Specialists Cohort (Puerto Rico)
"I am an applied statistician working at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard University. My research focuses on applications in genomics and cancer but I have also developed statistical methods for estimating excess deaths.
"I was born and raised in Puerto Rico (PR) and all my family lives there. When the pandemic started in March 2020 I became particularly concerned about PR because, from previous experience, I knew the government had a very poor data infrastructure. "
"It was clear that tracking the situation via data was going to be key during this pandemic. As late as June the government was still not reporting key outcomes such as the number of tests performed each day, so it was impossible to fully assess the public health situation. With help from some key people in the Department of Health, I obtained access to data and built a simple public dashboard showing a test positivity rate graph."
"This led public …
