10.21.20 The COVID-19 Test. Who Should Take It?

The County of Santa Clara
October 21, 2020
Live Stream - Briefing Live stream
10:00am PT


Corina Herrera-Loera: Good morning my name is Corina Herrera-Loera Public Information Officer for Santa Clara County and we will be taking our masks just during the segment so that we can have our translators translate and you can understand us better we are six feet apart from our guests today but before I introduce our guest I want to remind everybody that we continue to be on Tier Orange and some of you may have heard last night or yesterday that the State changed their order for Counties who are in the Orange Tier to allow attendance at professional sporting events at 20 capacity however here in the County of Santa Clara we will not be changing its order and it will continue we will continue to prohibit attendance at professional sporting events and the reasons for this is that 20 capacity of any one of our County large stadiums or arenas amounts to at least 10 000 spectators in these stands and even if people are staying in their seats and socially distancing they're still sharing bathrooms, exits, entrances arriving to games around the same time and leaving at the same time which can spread the virus to others easily and with the transmission rate of two to four percent currently in our County this means that one person can infect hundreds in a single sporting event followed by continued spread of the virus to loved ones when they go back home and also it means that here in Santa Clara we absolutely could not take any risks you know as you all know we've been doing great we are slowly opening schools businesses able to eat inside and so we don't want to risk any of the work that we've already uh done and so not while schools are still struggling to reopen while businesses are still also struggling to reopen and outdoor gatherings are still restricted to three households so remember that we've worked so hard to get to where we are at we've made sacrifices to get us here and we can't lose this progress now and we can't put any more lives in danger so that is the reason why we are not uh opening um any of our professional sporting events here in the County of Santa Clara now I would like to introduce our guest today Indira Fonseca thank you Indira for returning to our show you provide us with a lot of good information so we want to make sure that we are up to date Indira is our Manager for the Joint Information Center on COVID-19 here in our Emergency Operations Center so we have a lot of questions for you thank you and let's start with our first one who should be tested for COVID-19?


Indira Fonseca: Thank you for having me um but absolutely everyone is welcome to test for COVID-19 absolutely they are welcome to visit any of our test sites and information is available on SCCfreetest.org with that being said a person so I'm going to go a little bit more in depth as to individuals that should be tested should visit or in guidance for our frontline workers as well so in addition a person that has been exposed to a person who has been tested positive for COVID-19 should be tested if they were within six feet of an infected person for at least 15 minutes or more at any time two days before this the infected person had symptoms or tested positive should definitely be tested people who have been exposed include people who had had 15 minutes of continuous contact or intermittent contact as well should be tested as well as people with short-term interactions with the infected people individual should be tested additional additionally while face coverings reduce the likelihood of COVID-19 transmission they have no impact on determining whether someone has been exposed to a person who tested positive for COVID-19. um we really want to make sure that individuals that should be getting tested are accessing our websites and maximize we have a big testing capacity so we definitely welcome them to visit our website and schedule a test or feel free to walk into one of our sites but the ones that are walk-in friendly.


Corina Herrera-Loera: Thank you and thank you for you know reiterating the close contact you know what that means like you said 15 minutes at any time um or closer within 6 feet because what does that mean right I know there's that there's a lot of times that some of us are experiencing symptoms and we test positive and we know but there's a lot of people that we don't know that have it right?


IF: That's right and then there's also um several scenarios that we've encountered at our call centers our business call center specifically employers that have received calls from their uh staff saying you know they just simply don't feel well but they don't have a confirmed positive case it is good guidance for the individual to stay home and access testing as well we do have you know there's several medical conditions that staff or individuals in the public have in general so it is good guidance so just make sure that you are tested uh public and also our frontline workers as well we have to um the testing is definitely one of our tools uh to ensure that our safety and the safety of our community.


CHL: Thank you and so uh is it safe to go there or is the line you know will it be long or how do um how will people get tested is it safe to be there like you know I've also I've heard people say you know I might get scared that I might even get it there you know is it safe to be there.


IF: Absolutely that's that's definitely one of the uh questions that we've received as well um but I do want to ensure that Santa Clara County is doing everything um to make sure that everyone that is accessing our sites feel safe we are using you know we are social distancing ensuring that we also have appointments so that we do not have clusters of individuals that are trying to be tested so we do have scheduling appointments it's very important to show up at the time that your appointment is scheduled also we do enforce face coverings at our site so we definitely are ensuring that the site is safe our health care workers providing the tests are safe and also our community that are visiting our sites or feeling safe as well.


CHL: Great and I also know that we have drive-through testing as well right so thank you for that information now how often should a person be tested?

IF: Yeah so um frontline workers and individuals are in high-risk positions such as grocery clerks it could be our law enforcement it could be a fire we do encourage them to be tested at least once a month but no more than every two weeks which is something that we also do as well here in-house as you will as you know also COVID-19 it's very important to know that COVID-19 status does not affect employment employment status if employees and employers would like additional guidance in regards to or information just related to COVID-19 at the workplace feel free to contact our Business Call Center and off and also our Office of Labor Standards Enforcement.


CHL: Thank you now I know you mentioned uh that there were some cases some scenarios uh that you've come across is there any scenarios that you can share with our community.


IF: Absolutely so there's different methods that an individual can be contract COVID-19 one of the transmission that begins at work or in social gatherings and then is introduced to the home so meaning if you have a teenager that may not have the education or they may go and go to a gathering come back and you know definitely expose grandparents especially now we are seeing multiple families in a single household so it's very important to ensure that we care for ourselves and hold ourselves responsible for our safety and for also the safety of our families we also have um households where they have more than one frontline worker and that's something that you know in my you know personally um me and my husband you know we are frontline workers and uh we make sure that we do everything within our power to keep um not just ourselves safe but also our children and any um in our in our family members but yet most definitely we want to make sure that also something to note once an individual is identified as a close contract either by the contact tracer or just in general by the employer we want to ensure that your personal health information is protected so that information will not be shared to individuals of the public we do have regulations that will protect your personal health information.


CHL: Thank you and I know you know even with myself right I trust my family and I love my mom and my brothers and my sister and I'm like well they can't have you know I'm just gonna you know sometimes I don't want to think that they might be carriers or even that I might be a carrier right to them or my nieces or nephews and so um I think we lower our guard easily and like oh well it's my family it's my mom um but we we really have to be careful not you know whether it's them it could be vice versa right it could be you transmitting it so I know the uh sometimes we lower our guard and we're like well it's just family and it's just us.


IF: Absolutely

CHL: But we need to be safe.

IF: Yeah and now that we're seeing that we're advancing to you know now that we are in the Orange-Tier and you know hopefully in the future in the near future will be in the Yellow-Tier we want to make sure that you know the holidays are coming right and we you know this is just a different an opportunity for us to demonstrate our love through other avenues uh keeping our loved ones safe you know the holidays are coming so we want to ensure that we could have Zoom um invitations you know have a friend's giving via Zoom so let's get creative with that and be able to uh share our holidays hopefully in the near future holidays with our loved ones in person but uh for this year at least you know to make sure that we're taking all the precautionary measures um also you know utilizing our tools the tools that we have right now face covering, social distancing our online avenues Zoom, Face time let's utilize those to make sure that again we can celebrate the future birthdays our holidays any special events to make sure that we are able to advance and create a safer environment for us to hopefully be able to go back to hugging and contact but for now definitely using and abiding by our current uh directives and guidelines to make sure that that's something in the near future.


CHL: Thank you so you heard it test every two weeks if you're an essential worker and if not uh once a month uh we encourage folks to test with their service providers their medical service providers so if you have Kaiser if you whoever you go to and you've been in close contact you are an essential worker you know go to your medical provider and as you've also heard we have several sites that the County has throughout the County of Santa Clara that you can also get tested and so we have a video that we'd like to show because I've also heard like oh I went in the beginning and I heard so much I will never get tested again

IF: That's right


CHL: So I just wanted to show what our testing looks like now and we have one of our co-workers who let us record her Jessica


IF: Jessica Rocha one of our staff here she's great and she um was very kind to allow us to


CHL: Yes

IF: use her so

CHL: Here we go so um you see you know hand sanitizing everybody keeps their PPE on um very friendly staff all the stuff that I've gotten you know tested by are awesome and amazing and they make you feel very comfortable there's some information that they need to take down to ensure that our information again like Indira mentioned is kept safe and sent to the lab with the correct uh specimen


IF: And you may also recognize some of the staff since they are often the ones in the sites as well so great staff at a great customer service


CHL: Yes absolutely and so they do have you know clean materials for each person and this swab and um our photographer our videographer will head over to the other side and it's just a swab and it doesn't go in maybe a centimeter if you could see that not painful at all so he swabs one side and then swabs the other side very soft not intrusive at all and there it is and she's saying that it doesn't hurt uh it's not painful and it's very easy and fast so um there you go

IF: Stay apart

CHL: Yes so we just wanted to show the process of what it looks like to get tested you know it's very easy as you saw you know she was fine um no tears you know uh and so I just want to remind our community that it's safe to get tested it's easy and it does not hurt and Indira anything else you would like to add before we close up today


IF: I would like to on behalf of Santa Clara County here the staff here just thank you for your continued efforts to ensure that we are all doing our part and holding ourselves accountable for uh to minimize transmission of COVID-19 and utilizing the tools that I mentioned and we do have resources here available for our public our employers our employees that need support or just would like additional guidance feel free to contact us.

CHL: Thank you so much again for coming and sharing that information with our community uh and all who tuned in please continue to keep yourself safe healthy as Indira mentioned wash your hands regularly wear your face masks keep six feet social distance from one another and I know the cold weather is coming and we want to take our families indoors and we want to gather with folks indoors but just remember we've sacrificed already a lot we've taken our County to Tier-Orange we have one tier to go Yellow and then eventually to get out of this pandemic so let's not forget all the progress we've made I also know you know we have a lot of cultural events like uh Indira mentioned a lot of uh

IF: Halloween

CHL: Different Halloween's coming up that's right

IF: Thanksgiving


CHL: All of those things be creative plan ahead you know plan ahead for you and your family to stay safe you know what is that going to look like uh making sure that we keep all these things in mind to get out of this pandemic uh and our County is doing great we got to keep pushing forward um thank you all for tuning in again today and remember uh we will be again here on Friday at 10 am to provide more information thank you thank you