by Jondi Gumz
Santa Cruz County reports 14 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of March 18, California 870 cases and 16 deaths, the U.S. 10,751 cases and 154 deaths, and worldwide, more than 235,000 cases, more than 9,700 deaths — 3,400 in Italy and 3,100 in China — and more than 84,000 recoveries.
Santa Cruz County is one of seven counties in the San Francisco Bay Area under a “shelter in place” order to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
The question many people have is: How do you get tested?
Here is the answer from Santa Cruz County spokesman Jason Hoppin
“There are two paths for testing: public health system and private payer system.
We are only testing symptomatic sick patients under care of a physician. You are at very low risk of transmitting the virus if you are asymptomatic.
Jason Hoppin
The issue with tests right now isn’t the number of tests available but lab capacity. For public health tests, it takes about 48 hours for the results to come back. Those tests are conducted at public labs out of Santa Cruz County. Santa Clara county has one lab and that is the one we usually use, although there are other labs available.
Private labs take 5 to 6 days to turn the test around. Turnaround time will improve as we go forward, and many top medical schools are volunteering their labs to do tests too. Regardless of your path, the federal government has passed legislation making tests free for everyone.
Even using the strict criteria of meeting the symptom pattern and being under care of a doctor, five out of every six tests in Santa Cruz County come back negative.
At this point, testing helps document the spread of the disease but does nothing to prevent the spread.
I think a lot of people are misunderstanding this point. It’s out in the community, and quarantining contacts of confirmed patients no longer helps. It’s assumed to be too widespread already, and we have moved past containment and are focusing on mitigation. Without immunity or a vaccine, the only way we have to interrupt diseases is by social means.
That is why you’ve seen the extraordinary measures this week by public health officers throughout the Bay Area to implement a shelter in place order. We haven’t seen anything like this in the post-WWII era.
This will have long-lasting impacts on the community, and despite being only at the very earliest stages we are already hearing about layoffs, and people will lose income. We’re a service economy, and this will fall on service workers the hardest.”
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See www.cfscc.org/updates/3-ways-to-help-santa-cruz-countys-most-vulnerable
For updates on number of cases, see: santacruzhealth.org/HSAHome/HSADivisions/PublicHealth/CommunicableDiseaseControl/Coronavirus.aspx
See the number of confirmed cases in California: www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/Immunization/ncov2019.aspx
See the number of cases worldwide: www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 or www.domo.com/coronavirus-tracking
For resources for employers, schools community and faith-based organizations and travel recommendations, see: www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html