Virtual City Townhall COVID-19 Questions - 4.23.20
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Virtual City Townhall COVID-19 Questions - 4.23.20 COVID-19 TESTING How can I get tested? Verily, which is a South San Francisco based biotech company, was the very first company in the country to do mobile testing. They have set up a facility that has been very successful. It is setup at the San Mateo County fairgrounds in the City of San Mateo, just a few miles south of South San Francisco. You can get tested there by going online first. Their website, where you sign up to get tested is www.projectbaseline.com. Fill out a questionnaire and you can do the drive through testing there. We are very proud that is a South San Francisco company getting that done! When is the City of South San Francisco going to implement general testing for all of its residents? This is for peace of mind and knowing that I am able to join the workforce and can go see and be with family again. There is not yet an initiative to do communitywide testing of those who are not symptomatic to see if they are able to go back to work. First, it would be a lot broader than just South San Francisco. We're a very dense urban area and would also have to test Brisbane and San Bruno to make sure we have area immunity. But for the individual that is not yet in place, I would again try Verily if you'd like to get it done yourself. If you ask any physician who is involved in responding this pandemic, I think across the board we do all think that community based testing and widespread testing is a major part of having a return to normal. With that major testing, we have to do it in a smart and thoughtful way where we get information that we know what it means and what we can do to act on it. So right now, there's still limitations with the test. We've done an amazing job of making new tests that work in new ways, but don't yet know necessarily what the significance of these tests are in terms of using them to clear the community, go back to work. For example, one of the tests can find out if you have an active infection. Another test might be good at telling if you've developed antibodies, but doesn’t necessarily do both of those tests on a broad based community level and understand whether or not that means that we can clear people to go back to work. We don't yet know enough about the virus and its behavior to really make educated decisions on that at this time, but we are working on it. There are initiatives in place in many other places where they're doing focused large scale testing of the community. While it's not yet at the point where they should have every person, they are looking at the understanding the overall amount of people who are infected in the over amount of people have antibodies that can help guide us what to do with that information. We will probably soon hit the capacity point where we can start doing more testing. We want to make sure that we do the right thing with that information we're gathering, because at this point, we just don't know the significance of those results. We are waiting for the science to catch up where we can do that broad based community testing so we can go back to the real normal that we all enjoyed six months ago. But in the meantime, let's do what we know is appropriate - wear a mask and maintain social distancing. If you feel sick, stay home. The shelter in place will allow us to go back to work sometime in late May. As you know, we'll do the best we can with the precautions that have been provided. How accurate are the tests? So the tests have varying accuracy based off of what they are. The PCR tests, which are the nasal swabs, are very accurate at detecting the presence of the virus itself. The antibody test which is done using blood can be somewhat variable. Now, when they're negative, they're pretty darn good at saying that the patient does not have antibodies for the virus and they're positive it may or may not have as good performance. And that's more a factor of all tests being imperfect and the amount of patients who have the problem. These statistics do impact the performance of the test, so we have good test. We just don't necessarily know how much we can rely on them just yet. But a positive nasal swab does indicate virus. Is the testing data that has been gathered by the City, County or State level. Can we be sure it is being used only for this COVID-19 virus situation? So far, the tests that we're doing, the only information that we would be able to get from them is for COVID-19. There is no data that would be collected outside of the COVID-19 inception. Now, if you're hospitalized, they gather other data about what's going on with you, other medical problems. Your course of care, your health, all of those things that are pertinent to your medical care. But any testing that's done outside of the hospital for the purposes of COVID-19 is solely for the purposes of COVID-19. HEALTH-RELATED I work for an essential business, so I wear my mask at work. And any time that I'm at another essential business, I always have a mask on. Sometimes I feel like I can't breathe and that I'm not completely oxygenating my body and that's very concerning. Besides exercise, what are some other practices or lifestyle changes that I can make to ensure I don't suffer from other lung related health problems or become a carbon dioxide retainer? Your overall risk of becoming a carbon dioxide retainer or having long-term health issues is exceptionally low. The holes that are in the mask that allow the gases to pass through, especially a fabric mask, are large enough that most of the gas should be able to pass the very easily, and especially the carbon dioxide which diffuses in air very quickly, should be able to pass through quickly enough that it shouldn't cause any long term health effects. Now, if you're wearing a traditional fabric mask, a bandana, or even a surgical mask, the holes as well as the space around the sides of the mask should be large enough. So we want to make sure that all of the breath that you breathe out is being filtered through the mask and not through an exclusion port. It has been on the news that African Americans are being affected hard by the COVID-19 virus. Can you explain why this is the case? Very few communities of color in general, not just the African-American community do seem to have a significant increased risk of bad outcomes with COVID-19. While the reasons are still being investigated and are still unclear, we see it most in areas with the most income inequality and socioeconomic inequality, which may be a factor. People who have less access to healthcare may have more chronic underlying conditions, which might make them more at risk for cohabitating. FACEMASKS Is it a requirement to wear face coverings in all grocery stores and other public places? The County has issued that order. That order is effective in all cities, including South San Francisco. It was effective on Monday and they began enforcing it on Wednesday. Everyone who is out in public must wear a mask. People who are in their places of business, if they’re restaurant workers or they're working in a grocery store, should be wearing a mask. If you feel comfortable, you can remind them they should be wearing a mask. Otherwise, call our Police non-emergency line and we're in the business of politely reminding people that there are orders in place and you should be wearing a mask. We're trying to take, as our Police Chief said earlier, the soft approach to this and most people do take that to heart and abide by those orders. How often should homemade facemasks be washed? We don't have definitive information yet. The CDC does recommend that the facemasks are washed regularly. The overall recommendations that washing a face mask after a day of use is generally a good idea. Now, if a facemask is visibly soiled or heavily saturated with liquid or perspiration, it's much more important to wash it sooner. In general, washing your mask after a day of use would be both safe and prudent. In terms of washing facemasks, hand-washing with warm water and soap is definitely good as well as washing then drying with a hot air dryer. Washing the mask in your normal washing machine with normal detergent should also be appropriate for washing. Do children need to wear facemasks? That’s a very good and very important question. It is imperative that children less than 2 years of age do not wear a face covering. That's because children in that age group are susceptible to suffocation and decreased respiratory drive if they have something covering their face.