COVID Website Becomes Go-To Source for Industry

A website that tracks COVID-19 data has become a source of information for the entertainment and media industry. It plays a key role in SAG-AFTRA’s back-to-work protocols, which remain in effect as this issue of the magazine went to press. The site, covidactnow.org, is specifically referenced in the COVID-19 Return to Work Agreement that allowed members to go back to work on the set while mitigating risk.

“Our Return to Work Agreement depends on reliable data, and COVID Act Now provides timely, widely accepted and clearly presented information and analysis to help keep our members safe,” said Chief Contracts Officer Ray Rodriguez.

The industry uses the site to monitor the infection rate and daily new case rate to determine whether productions need to go into stricter COVID safety measures, such as increased testing or stricter quarantine measures.

The website is an initiative of the Act Now Coalition, a nonprofit organization founded in March 2020 by a multidisciplinary team of experts in public health, modeling, engineering, design, communications and operations. The team came together with a mission to create a shared understanding around COVID and, since then, the site has served more than 18 million users and keeps more than 200,000 subscribers up to date on COVID news.

“The team at Act Now has worked for almost two years to help individuals, communities, organizations and businesses make safe and informed public health decisions using data-backed practices,” said Act Now Chief Operations Officer Debbie Lai. “Being able to partner with the SAG-AFTRA team to be a part of their return-to-work methodology, providing a reliable, standardized set of COVID data, and helping ensure that their members are returning to work when it’s safe and appropriate to do so is exactly the kind of work and impact we set out to do in March of 2020.”

Act Now partners with the Stanford University Clinical Excellence Research Center, Georgetown University Center for Global Health Science and Security, and the Harvard Global Health Ititute. The coalition has worked with more than 100 federal, state and county officials as well as numerous multinational corporations and NGOs to develop data-driven COVID responses.

Member Armand Vasquez first brought the website to the attention of SAG-AFTRA leadership. In addition to being used by the entire entertainment industry, the website serves as a dependable source of data for numerous other organizations, including Unilever and the city of New Orleans.

This item originally featured in the SAG-AFTRA magazine fall/winter 2021 issue.