Coronavirus: SC Co. Supes Mull Testing, Life After Lockdown

SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CA — The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors made clear that they don't know what the future will look like after the county's shelter-in-place order, but teased the idea during their briefing with the county's public health officer Tuesday.

"There's a lot of uncertainty," Dr. Sara Cody, the county's public health officer, told the board Tuesday morning. "We have to get comfortable with uncertainty. And we are in this for the long haul."

As county residents stay indoors to curb the spread of COVID-19, public health officials expect case numbers to continue to rise and are working hard to lower whatever the future death count may be.

Cody said that while she and the rest of the county's public health experts wonder what to do after the shelter order is lifted, there are a number of checkpoints the county must reach before then.

"I think the next phase is going to be even harder," Cody said.

"I think the decisions are going to be even harder."

She said the county's hospitals must be ready and able to treat every patient that needs care, and the county must be able to test broadly and widely.

While the county's hospitals are currently functioning under capacity, there is no way to open the county's testing capacity publicly.

She added that this is the case throughout the entire country, which has a health care system dependent on the help of the private sector.

By Monday, the county had conducted 11,782 tests for COVID-19 - including 1,285 positive and 1,243 negative confirmations. About 250 tests have not been officially counted yet.

Furthermore, the county can only process results of a test in about 2.27 days, which is "significantly less" time than it was earlier last month or last week, according to Dr. Karen Smith, the former California Department of Public Health director and a speaker during the board's Tuesday meeting.

Additionally, the county's public health lab has run just 237 tests compared to Stanford's labs' 4,010 tests.

And Verily, a Google-backed company, has seen 2,558 test subjects, though their tests are run and confirmed through other commercial private labs which report their data independent of the county's official count.

"The good news is there's more testing (and) the time to getting results is much shorter than it was before, but clearly there is a significant need for additional testing," the former state public health director said, who added that there is a shortage in testing materials - particularly the swabs clinicians use to gather specimens to test - that further limits testing capabilities in the county, the country and the rest of the world.

She also added that the county needs to be able to test any and all workers at the county's health care facilities in order to be able to move forward into post-shelter life, but the county does not presently have that capability.

The board asked for clarifications and timelines on when these new testing measures can happen, but the health officials were not able to offer specific or definitive dates.

The public is simply waiting for a vaccine and waiting for a peak in confirmed cases to signify a turning point. Until then, the county has continued plans to shelter in place to save as many lives as possible.

"People are going to die no matter what, it's just a matter of what risk we're willing to take," the county's executive, Dr. Jeff Smith, said to the board.

"This is not going to be an easy thing to do." Board president Cindy Chavez noted her concern for departments that have seen high volumes of employees in isolation, noting that some departments have seen between 12 and 50 employees.

She said she wants to know what can be done to make sure certain departments with a finite number of essential workers can be tested to ensure their department can continue to function in the coming months.

"The testing capacity is not there to test everybody that needs to get tested," Cody told the board.

Jeff Smith added that the county does not "have the authority to tell them what to do, how much they can do or whether they do it or not."

Supervisor Joe Simitian asked Cody to explain what testing for antibodies can do to help locally, to which she replied that it could help health care workers know if they had been infected and had some form of immunity to COVID-19, but that she would need further information to make any official decision on the capabilities of such testing.

Supervisor Mike Wasserman asked if anyone can test positive for the virus, get over the disease and then test positive again, and Supervisor Dave Cortese asked for a new dashboard to display results of homeless individuals who have tested positive for the virus.

Cody said there will certainly be reintroduction of the disease into the public for any number of reasons.

Ky Le, the county's office of supportive housing director, did not offer a new dashboard for the county but did update the board by saying "at this point we're not aware of any COVID-positive persons who need non-congregate sheltering" apart from the 17 people identified since last week that have been sheltered and isolated due to possible exposure.

Also, Supervisor Susan Ellenberg asked that the board consider expanded and widely accessible child care services no later than the first week of August. By Monday, Santa Clara County had 1,285 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 43 deaths.

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