Fresno’s COVID-19 tests keep pace, but a higher share of people are testing positive
After struggling for several months to ramp up its capacity to test for the novel coronavirus, Fresno County has finally achieved the state’s threshold of about 1,500 tests per day.
“We’ve met that metric for about 10 days now,” said Dr. Rais Vohra, Fresno County’s interim health officer, in a media briefing Monday. “That’s very reassuring. We’ve built the capacity and following through on getting the testing done.”
But a higher percentage of people getting tested are showing signs that they are infected with COVID-19, even if they’re not showing symptoms, Vohra said. “The positivity rate still stays high, and that’s something we need to work on.”
As of Monday afternoon, the Fresno County Department of Public Health reported that 9.1% of tests are coming back positive. That means that for every 1,000 people tested, 91 are infected with the contagion. A week ago, it was a little more than 8% – an indicator that the transmission of the virus is spreading, not retreating.
Of more than 72,200 tests that have been processed, almost 6,600 have come back positive.
“The state wants (the positivity rate) to be below 8%,” Vohra said. “I would love to have it at 5%.”
Getting below 8% is one of the key measures, along with shrinking the number of new cases on a daily or weekly basis, for the state to let Fresno County off a watch list of problem areas for which new closure orders have been issued for bars, indoor dining and entertainment venues to stem the spread of the coronavirus.
”We need to work on getting off the targeted engagement list,” Vohra acknowledged Monday.
Testing sites open
So far, the state has collaborated with Fresno County to open three high-volume testing sites, each capable of collecting nasal-swab samples from more than 130 people each day. Additional testing is taking place at doctors’ offices, clinics, hospitals and pharmacies around the county, and Vohra said he’s hopeful that the state will provide resources for a fourth high-volume testing center to serve rural areas of western Fresno County.
A list of testing sites that are available for Fresno County residents is on the county health department’s website.
New ways to test
The way that samples are collected is also changing to make it less of an ordeal for people. Early in the pandemic, testing called for a long swab to be inserted far up a person’s nose to the rear of the nasal cavity to collect a tissue to be investigated.
Newer protocols being used for some testing involve a shorter swab that doesn’t go as far up the nose, Vohra said. “It allows us to do a little more superficial, not-as-deep poking,” he said. “We think they’re both equivalent, especially when someone is symptomatic” with such indications as fever, cough, shortness of breath or other cold or flu symptoms associated with COVID-19.
“It’s more about the time spent inside the nose, rather than where,” Vohra added.
Whatever the means used to collect samples, the number of cases keeps climbing. Over the past two weeks, an average of 222 new coronavirus cases have been revealed each day in Fresno County. Two weeks ago, the average was 98 new cases daily.
Vohra expressed continued concern over the turnaround time between when a person goes for a test and when results come back – usually a period of two to three days. “It’s better now” than early in the pandemic, he said. “We still hear about the nightmare scenario where it takes five to seven days.”
That critical week, Vohra said, is a period in which people are more likely to be going about their daily business in the community and potentially spreading the virus before they know whether they have the contagion or not.
“We think that’s driving a lot of the transmission,” he said.
This story was originally published July 7, 2020 at 8:50 AM.
