Coronavirus and COVID-19 Information: Santa Clara County and Bay Area, California

The first publicly available tests (in the U.S.) for this disease use a swab in nose and throat passages, That sample is then examined for coronavirus RNA fragments, and a positive test result means that there is an active COVID-19 infection.

Processing these tests can take a few days to get results. Those few days can make a big difference in how seriously ill someone can become, or in how many people can be infected through contact - so don't wait for test results before taking precautions!

Here are links to testing locations in the Bay Area. Please note: some are only available to patients enrolled in that system, others accept patients with any or no health insurance.

(However, being treated for COVID-19 is another matter. For more information on help with medical costs of treating COVID-19, use the page in this guide In for the Long Haul.)

When to get tested can be a tricky question. Testing too early, before an infection takes hold, can give a false negative test, and could end up spreading the novel coronavirus. Studies have found that swab tests are most accurate sometime between day day 4 and day 10 after exposure, usually 2 days before symptoms appear. If you think you may have been exposed at a specific event, follow this timeline from Santa Clara County Public Health:

On June 10, Santa Clara County issued an Order that requires all healthcare systems and health insurance plans to test people who request the live coronavirus  and fall into one (or more) of these 4 categories:

• currently have symptoms of COVID-19;
• had contact with someone with a confirmed case of COVID-19 (perhaps discovered through contact tracing);
• frontline workers or those who have frequent contact with the public (who should be retested every 2 weeks, ideally);
• took part in public protests within the last week.

One of the techniques for testing groups of people efficiently, to verify that no one in the group is infected, is "pool testing" or "batch testing". Instead of labs analyzing tests one-by-one, tests from an easily identified group (for example, people who share an office, or are on the same shift) are analyzed by a lab together in the same batch. If all test negative, then presumably everyone in that group is not infectious. This is a faster, less expensive, and easier way to ensure the safety of those places of business that are required to test all workers every couple of weeks, for example. It is not useful when cases of infection are expected, because if the test turns up positive, each person in the group has to be re-tested individually - so it's not used when there are outbreaks or hotspots of infection.

You've been contacted and asked to get tested, or someone you've had contact with has a confirmed case of COVID-19 - now what? Here's comprehensive guidance for what to do next:

A contract tracer should only ask questions about your COVID-19 symptoms or status, and about the people you may have had contact in a specific period of time.

Legitimate contact tracers will never ask you for a Social Security number or about immigration status, for any health insurance or financial information. (If you are asked any of those questions, the call may be a scam. Please do not give out those details, and make a complaint to the CA State Attorney General.)

 Contact tracing in-person is a labor-intensive process, and our memories can be fallible.

To help automate that process while at the same time protecting our privacy, a new phone app is available in California. This will be available throughout the state starting Dec. 10, 2020. For more details, see:

Because so many people have no symptoms with this disease, the only way to tell who has had it - and who might be immune to the current version of this virus - is to look for antibodies in their systems. Several different trial versions of antibody tests are being used and tested, but as of this writing, none of them have reliable accuracy. Since these all involve testing for various substances in the blood, these are referred to as serologic tests.

On May 23, The CDC released guidance on serologic tests which included these strong recommendations [emphasis added]:

• Serologic testing should not be used to determine immune status in individuals until the presence, durability, and duration of immunity is established.
• Serologic test results should not be used to make decisions about grouping persons residing in or being admitted to congregate settings, such as schools, dormitories, or correctional facilities.
• Serologic test results should not be used to make decisions about returning persons to the workplace.

However, antibody tests are useful in these ways:

• Serologic testing can be offered as a method to support diagnosis of acute COVID-19 illness for persons who present late [i.e., after symptoms have passed, to determine if it really was COVID-19].
• Serologic testing should be offered as a method to help establish a diagnosis when patients present with late complications of COVID-19 illness, such as multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children.

Ultimately, without reliable antibody testing, we cannot have good data on the spread of COVID-19 .