How did they do that? It was thanks to a tip from a citizen scientist named Michael Donnelly. 'We triggered the investigation as people were getting symptomatic,' says Demetre Daskalakis, a deputy incident manager for the CDC's COVID-19 Response. Not so with the Provincetown, Mass., cluster that started around July Fourth weekend.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a lot of ways to pick up on COVID-19 outbreaks, but those methods often take awhile to bear fruit.
When his vaccinated friends started getting sick following July Fourth festivities in Provincetown, Mass., he documented more than 50 breakthrough cases that ultimately led the CDC to changing its guidance on masking.
A data scientist working in tech, Michael Donnelly became an amateur COVID-19 watcher early in the pandemic.
