Testing?… Testing?… COVID Press Conference Delves Into Who Should Test, How Often

The Humboldt County COVID-19 Joint Information Center hosted a virtual news conference to provide an update on the county’s pandemic response, including the recent run on testing supplies, and answer questions from local media. Panelists included Public Health Director Sofia Pereira and County Health Officer Dr. Ian Hoffman.

For this type of press conference, the Joint Information Center (JIC) moderates the question and answer exchange in a zoom meeting, where local media presents questions and follow-ups to local officials who give their responses in real time.  The resulting video, called a Virtual Press Conference, is then posted to the county’s COVID-19 YouTube channel at the end of the day. 

Here are some of the main points covered in the January 19th Virtual Press Conference, with a summary of answers from the participants. Due to technological failure, the press conference video and resulting transcript are incomplete, ending abruptly in the first half of the press conference. 

El video del 19 de enero de preguntas y respuestas de medios con el Dr. Ian Hoffman, que muestra subtítulos disponibles en español, usando las opciones del menú de YouTube y seleccionando ‘auto-subtítulos’ y luego seleccionando un idioma.

My name is Christine Messinger, welcome to the December 2st COVID-19 virtual news conference. I’m one of the public information officers for the COVID-19 Joint Information Center and today we are joined by Humboldt County Health Director Sofia Pereira and Humboldt County Health Officer Dr Ian Hoffman. Thank you for being here.

Director Pereira, can you please provide us with some opening comments?

Director Pereira:  Yeah, thanks, Christine. Good Afternoon, everyone. So, we called this presser together because we’ve been getting lots of calls about testing. So as of the beginning of the year, the call center has answered a total of 1,422 calls and emails and a total of 59,754 since the call center opened in March 2020. Now, not all of these in the past few weeks have been about testing, but with the surge and really just exponential increase in the use of testing – both antigen,…home rapid tests, and PCR – at our Optum sites. 

For example, we just thought it was really important to respond to the questions that we’re getting around testing. So, I’m going to turn it over to Dr. Hoffman, to continue with opening remarks.

1 in 30 secs in:

Dr. Hoffman: Thanks, Sophia. Thanks everyone for being here today on short notice. Yeah, a couple quick messages, and then we’ll get into the questions. So, as Sophia was mentioning, really a focus in this phase of the pandemic on testing as one of the primary tools, because we know that Omicron is fast moving, it’s highly contagious, and it’s definitely here based on the numbers – widespread. 

So, you know, I think the big take-home is, if you’re having trouble finding supplies, know that you’re not alone. This is happening everywhere. But if we need to prioritize, we should really be prioritizing those who are sick, to find out if they have…COVID, or some other colds that are certainly circulating in our community right now.

We, everyone, is working hard across the country and the state here locally to get out any tests that are available. The federal government just opened up a website to allow for each household to order four tests, and that’s something that I would encourage everyone to go utilize immediately, and that’s at COVIDtest.gov and then many of our community can access testing at school sites, through you know, kids who are at schools. If their schools are doing testing, some have been given at-home tests, and so those can be utilized for those students who receive the tests, and there’s also a way to report those. Through CDPH, has a website, and the instructions should have been given by the schools to the families who were given those tests from their schools. 

So you know, just another recognition we’re certainly not going to have enough tests to get through the Omicron surge. It is overwhelming all testing across the board, so we might have to prioritize some cuts in the coming weeks.

I think the other main piece that needs to be focused on in this surge is masking. You know, we know that there is a lot more spread with this, so increasing your mask usage and increasing your quality of a mask is something that will certainly help protect you. So, CDPH recently put out update to their ‘get the most out of masking’ web page, which is a great one, and it really shows you sort of the quality and the levels, and you know, we have a wide variety here that you can see sort of what different options are, you know…

Certainly the kind of mask that Sophia has, like an N95 or a KN95 are the best. A surgical mask like I have, with a, if needed, a double mask to improve the fit, to make it tighter fit, would be a good option. But if you only have a cloth mask, then that certainly is something that you should use. it will still offer some protection. it’s just not as good as other masks that are widely available now, so get the most out of masking, and it certainly will help us get through this current surge. 

The vaccination still continues to be the most effective tool against all forms of the coronavirus COVID-19, so you know, definitely encourage people to get their primary series if they haven’t, to finish their primary series if they started it but haven’t finished it yet, and to get boosted if you are eligible. The numbers are still very strong that those who are fully vaccinated and/or boosted have much much lower hospitalization risk and much, much lower risk of death.

And lastly, just a touch on our numbers for the last few weeks and the numbers that you’ll probably see this week, and potentially over the coming weeks. They are getting quite high as we expected. Our current case rate for 100,000 is around 150 per hundred thousand. That’s about double of what it was last week when we had a press conference. We were seeing about anywhere from 50 to 70 at that time, and these numbers are, you know, we should recognize that the the numbers we report daily – the daily case counts – are really kind of more of a rolling average. They’re not always the cases we’ve had in the last 24 or 48 or even 72 hours, so those are just one snapshot, which is why we like to look at that trend over time, of the seven day average. But the trend is clearly well on the upswing, and I think we’re still not at the peak yet. We’re probably at least a week or two away from that peak. 

So, keep an eye on those trends because when they start coming down you know we’ll still probably have another week or two on the other side of the peak, as it comes down from very high numbers. So that’s all I had for updates, and I’ll turn it over to Christine for questions. Thank you.

JIC:  Thank you, Dr. Hoffman. August, do you have a question for the panel? 

7 mins in:

The Lumberjack: Yes, I do. My question was is Humboldt County doing anything to monitor the cases of post-COVID symptoms or long COVID as we have you know, a huge amount of recovered people?

Dr. Hoffman: Thanks, August. Great question. So long-COVID or, you know, post-COVID infection symptoms are something that are well-recognized and being studied. Ongoing studies around them, not really as much of a public health realm, though, as in the medical realm. So certainly something that, you know, we will continue to watch and I think there’s a lot of questions still about the, each variant, and what will happen with long COVID there, but no, no answers as of yet. 

JIC:  Do you have a follow-up, August, or is that good?

8 mins in:

The Lumberjack:  My question was, we have stats on the hospitalizations in Humboldt County, we have stats on the deaths in Humboldt County – is there any plan, or ongoing effort to monitor the instances of long COVID within Humboldt County?

Dr. Hoffman: Yeah, so again we–Public Health–does not follow long COVID. It’s really more of a something in the medical community at large, less of a… it’s less of a Public Health issue.

JIC:  Thank you. Ryan, do you have a question? 

9 mins in:

Redheaded Blackbelt: Yes, thank you. In regard to the COVID surge we’re experiencing right now, it’s seriously impacting local businesses as you know, it’s exacerbating the pre-existing hospital staffing crisis, you know, and so creating staffing shortages really across all sectors of the community – it’s really a huge problem for small business owners to cope with. So, in light of testing, I wanted to ask you if you could talk a little bit about testing, using the rapid tests as a means of infection control, as opposed to testing for identification of cases after an exposure? And maybe how testing in this way – as a method of exposure control and prevention – may benefit local businesses?

Dr. Hoffman: Yeah, great question, Ryan. So, you know, when we have plentiful supply of those rapid tests, they can be quite useful to slow the spread by identifying people quickly and rapidly in a setting where they might spread it to others.

So you know,if if we say could test everyone in a workplace weekly or twice a week or in a setting where people are gathering together and all those people who are entering take a test within 24 hours or so before they enter that large gathering, it can really catch cases that might have otherwise spread in those environments. So, that’s really the method of infection prevention – is catching people early and excluding them, isolating them from those potential larger groups. 

And for staffing, as you’re asking about, it will help preserve your staffing. Of course, that is dependent on large quantities of these tests being available, which right now, given the, just the sheer number of, the volume of cases we’re seeing everywhere, they have become extraordinarily strained. So, what I was suggesting in the beginning is if we are under a circumstance where there are not enough tests, we would really want to identify those people who are more likely to be positive – those who have symptoms.

You know, again, these are individual decisions that are tough to make with limited resources. We’ve had to do this many times throughout the pandemic, you know, including early on with PCR testing. You know, even some places had to decide and ration out their ventilators in certain circumstances where there weren’t enough. So, these are not easy decisions, but  certainly something that people might face in the coming weeks as the testing becomes potentially even more limited than it is right now. 

JIC: Ryan, do you have a follow-up question?

12 mins 15 secs in: 

RHBB: Thank you, Yes. I’d just like to ask I guess my question would be, as a follow-up, if you have any you know points for best practices for local business owners in terms of testing staff – maybe in a scenario where rapid tests are in stock for that business they have a back back stock or whatever, and then for businesses who don’t have access – best practices for staff? Thank you. 

Dr. Hoffman:  Yeah, so again, in an unlimited circumstance – if there are plentiful rapid antigen tests – you know, doing a weekly test of everyone. And then if you identify a positive, doing either contact tracing, or, we’re now really sort of moving towards anyone who had potential exposure, so anyone in that group who is in the same space as that person could just get tested again, if they had that exposure, would be the best way to slow slow this thing down, and utilize those plentiful resources.

If they are limited, you would want to utilize those for your workers who were symptomatic, so that you could identify a positive, exclude them, and even potentially bring them back, you know earlier, if they were on a five-day isolation, have the ability to get out early from that. 

Or, people who might have had a high exposure, you could get them out of quarantine earlier on day five with that test. So, different scenarios just depend on, again, the limit, the availability and how many tests are accessible to that business.

JIC: Thank you, Christina, do you have a question? 

13 mins 45 secs in:

Redwood News: Yes, my question is, so, as HSU is back on campus as of yesterday, and they chose to go back on campus instead of other Cal States that chose to go virtual for the first few weeks since – you did mention that the peak is about to hit in a week or so – would you suggest for HSU to go virtual during those few weeks? or what would you say about that?

Dr. Hoffman: You know, it’s really a decision that’s up to each individual administration. We, as Public Health, have continued to offer, you know, clear guidance on how to make public spaces safe, which includes things like masking, distancing, testing, vaccinations – they are doing all of those things at HSU, and we have been in communication with them. So, I think the ultimate decision is up to them. If we make any recommendations to limit large gatherings, it would be kind of across the board – it wouldn’t just be one specific sector. 

JIC: Christina, do you have a follow-up question? 

15 mins 15 secs in:

RN: Yes, thank you for that answer. It was more, a little bit more about masks. I know you mentioned it earlier, but for those that can’t get an N95 mask, would you suggest double masking ?

Hoffman: No, not with a N95. An N95 should be sufficient on its own, but other masks like you know, a surgical mask or a double cloth flare mask. There’s one exception to that which is if you have an a vented mask with a valve on it that’s a one-way valve, then you should really have another mask on top of that, too, because those vents allow you- they protect the person wearing it, but they’re not protecting anyone around them. 

So that would be the one exception to some N95s having a vent and some valves are not two-way, they don’t allow all of the exhalation to escape. so it can get a little tricky to evaluate those, but in general, if you have a valve on a mask, it’s good to put another cloth layer on top of that.

JIC: Isabella, do you have a question?

16 mins 30 secs in:

Times-Standard: I do, thank you. So there have been 2806 cases of COVID since the beginning of the year. Is there any inclination by county health officials to lock down the county again? And Dr. Hoffman sort of touched on this, but how bad of a year are health officials really expecting in the wake of this kind of start taking into consideration, of course, the severity of COVID versus previous, or, the severity of Omicron versus previous variants?

The Humboldt County COVID-19 dashboard reflects a significant surge in positive tests coinciding with the start of the year, in 2022.

Hoffman: So we have no plans locally in Humboldt County to deviate from recommendations from the CDP and CDPH. We are currently continuing to review our local case count, our local hospitalizations and deaths and make determinations based on that local data if we need to do things any stricter here. 

I’ll just say currently in the hospital situation, you know, while the numbers are still fairly high it does look like we are seeing less severity overall.

However we are also seeing some pretty severe cases. So, not clear if that’s still Delta that’s out there circulating in addition to Omicron, or you know certainly there are some severe cases of Omicron as well, so we’ll continue to watch the data, but for now no plans to change any local policies. 

[Video ends abruptly at 17 mins 53 secs – cutting off approximately 22 minutes of Q & A dialogue]  

Community members with questions or concerns are encouraged to call 1-707-441-5000 for additional information.  

View the Data Dashboard online at humboldtgov.org/dashboard, or go to humboldtgov.org/DashboardArchives to download data from a previous time. 

For the most recent COVID-19 information, visit cdc.gov or cdph.ca.gov. Local information is available at humboldtgov.org or by contacting [email protected] 

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The Humboldt County COVID-19 dashboard reflects a significant surge coinciding with the start of the year, in 2022.