To test or not to test: Conflicting advice for those who are vaccinated
Yolo County and Healthy Davis Together appear to be at odds over whether fully vaccinated individuals should continue to get regularly tested for COVID-19.
During a Davis City Council meeting last week, Healthy Davis Together officials urged residents to continue to get tested even after being vaccinated, citing breakthrough cases of fully vaccinated individuals who have tested positive.
But Yolo County Health Officer Dr. Aimee Sisson said Thursday she discourages routine testing of people who are fully vaccinated and have no COVID symptoms, in part because of the possibility of false positives that lead to “unnecessary isolation and quarantine.”
Coronavirus Disease Weekly News 09May 2021
The news posted last week for the coronavirus 2019-nCoV (aka SARS-CoV-2), which produces COVID-19 disease, has been surveyed and some important articles are summarized here. The articles are more or less organized with general virus news and anecdotes first, then stories from around the US, followed by an increased number of items from other countries around the globe. Economic news related to COVID-19 is found here.
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Summary:
Major coronavirus metrics continue to head lower in the US, and now also globally. New cases in the US during the week ending May 8th were down 18.6% from new cases during the week ending May 1st, and are now down 83.3% from the January peak; this week also saw fewer new cases than any week since September. This week s US deaths attributed to Covid were 6.8% lower than the prior week s, and down 80.5% from the January hig
Letter: Get tested again this week
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How long has it been since you’ve been tested for COVID-19? No reason to, you think, you have no symptoms, and maybe you are one of the lucky ones with the vaccination. But if it has been more than two weeks, get over to Healthy Davis Together testing site for one of their easy-peasy vaccine tests. This week you may have been to a store, eaten out with some friends or attended a family gathering. Or maybe one of these types of exposures is on the calendar for next week? You have a low but non-zero probability of exposure to the virus.
Decline in testing raises concerns for Healthy Davis Together leaders
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Healthy Davis Together reported an uptick in new COVID-19 cases as well as the test positivity rate recently. HDT provides asymptomatic testing to everyone who lives or works in Davis as well as their family members.
Healthy Davis Together graphic
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B.1.1.7 variant now accounts for 75 percent of local cases
Asymptomatic COVID-19 testing by Healthy Davis Together has given Davis one of the lowest test-positivity rates in California, but those overseeing the unique city-campus partnership are alarmed by the decline in testing among community members.
That testing, along with the genotyping by the UC Davis Genome Center, has helped officials identify multiple variants of concern circulating in Davis. While the B.1.1.7 variant now represents 75 percent of all positive test results picked up through community and campus testing, other variants present locally include the P.1.
Yolo County remains in orange tier with case rate steady
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Several more California counties including Los Angeles and San Francisco made the move to the least-restrictive yellow tier on the state’s COVID-19 blueprint this week, but Yolo County remains mired in orange.
With neither the adjusted daily case rate nor the health equity quartile metric meeting the requirements of the yellow tier this week, the soonest Yolo can move to yellow is now May 19.
Moving to yellow would allow businesses like gyms, movie theaters, museums and stadiums to operate at higher indoor capacity and allow others like bars that don’t serve meals to open for the first time in a very long time.