The university will be conducting a real-time simulation meant to emulate the transmission of different viruses and diseases over the next week. 

The simulation works to educate people about the transmission of infectious diseases and can help Colorado Mesa University (CMU) prepare for potential outbreaks. 

In light of the COVID outbreak that became severe in March of 2020, CMU contacted the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard to formulate their Safe Together, Strong Together initiative. CMU is once again connecting with these institutions. 

“We are doing Operation Outbreak this semester. We did it last semester and it was a smaller simulation, but we wanted to do a bigger simulation. Operation outbreak is an app created by MIT and Harvard, through the Broad Institute and it uses Bluetooth to track its spread,” Senior Kinesiology Major Hailey Johnson said. 

The school is incentivizing students to partake in the simulation by offering money to clubs that have the most involvement with the app and a general raffle where individuals can win prizes like an Apple Watch or Air Pods. 

The app tracks how many contacts a student makes on campus and allows masks and other precautions through quizzes and QR codes.