Swab!: Reflections from the Front Lines of the COVID Testing Crisis

(Hardback)

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Behind the scenes of the rush to create mass Covid testing programs overnight

Jon R. Cohen, MD, led Covid testing for New Yorks first drive-through testing sites, the NBA Bubble at Disney World, the NFL, the MLS, Royal Caribbean cruise lines, New York City Public Schools, and many others while performing the most COVID-19 tests of any lab in the country. As CEO and executive chairman of BioReference Laboratories, Cohen and his team, along with heads of private healthcare companies and labs across the country, stepped into the leadership void left by the US government and CDC to help the general public at the height of the pandemic.

Swab! is the story of how Cohen and his thousands of courageous and intrepid teammates worked around the clock for two years to create bespoke Covid mass testing programs literally overnight at scale from scratchall this despite the CDC having no coordinated testing plan and being no help to the private leaders who stepped up. Swab! offers leadership lessons and reflections from the front lines against the battle against Covid and offers a gameplan for America to manage the next pandemic.

Swab! is the first book to tell the full story of COVID-19 testing and an important component in the historic record of a once-in-a-century pandemic. It is a testimonial to the strength of our health care professionals, a lesson in decision-making for leaders, and a visceral, relatable read for anyone who felt a cotton swab almost reach their brain while taking a Covid-19 test.

Author Bio

Dr. Jon R. Cohen was CEO and Executive Chairman of Bioreference Laboratories when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Dr. Cohen led Bioreference to national prominence to become one of the country's largest providers of COVID-19 testing and the nation's leader in surveillance testing.

Dr. Cohen has more than 30 years of healthcare experience as a seasoned strategic leader and healthcare policy expert with a successful track record of growing new healthcare business ventures. He has previously been named as one the nation's top 50 most powerful physician executives by Modern Healthcare and is recognized for his popular TEDMED talk, "Why Don't Patients Act Like Consumers"

Dr. Cohen began his career as a vascular surgeon and served as Chief Medical Officer at Northwell Health, the largest healthcare system in New York State, and as Chief Policy Advisor to former New York Governor David A. Paterson. He completed his residency in general surgery at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center and a fellowship in vascular surgery at the Brigham and Women's Hospital at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Cohen currently serves as CEO of Talkspace, one of the nation's leading providers of telehealth mental health services. He lives in Great Neck, New York with his wife, Karen Kostroff, M.D., chief of breast surgery for the Northwell Health System.