SAN JOSE (KPIX 5) – As Santa Clara County marks exactly two years since their first COVID-19 case, officials noted progress in beating back the omicron surge and announced changes to health orders involving testing.
On Monday, the county has ordered all private healthcare providers to offer a COVID-19 test to patients within 24 hours of request, and return results within 72 hours, as part of a broader effort to shift the “burden” of testing and vaccinations away from the county.
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The updated health order comes on the two-year anniversary of the first official case of COVID-19 detected in the county. In an order dating back to September 2020, the county only required healthcare providers to respond to requests by the end of the following day.
Monday’s order, announced by County Counsel James Williams, prohibits healthcare providers from diverting requests to other providers, or to governmental agencies.
On January 14, the county revealed it was conducting a disproportionately high number of tests, and asked members of the public to report testing problems with their providers to scccovidconcerns.org. At the time, Williams said continued violations might result in fines.
On Monday, Williams revealed Palo Alto Medical Foundation, Sutter Health, Kaiser, El Camino Hospital, and others, have all received warning letters.
Monday’s order also expands options to include at-home tests, and essential workers.
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“It allows healthcare providers to use both antigen and PCR testing, the prior order was only PCR testing,” said Williams. “And instead of requiring routine surveillance testing for essential workers it now will require testing aligned with the guidance from the California Department of Public Health, as well as from the County Public Health Department.”
Ever since a patient returned to the South Bay from Wuhan, China, infected with COVID-19 on January 31, 2020, Santa Clara County has logged more than 283,000 cases, and more than 2,000 deaths.
However, several major metrics seem to be trending in the right direction.
Hospitalizations are generally declining. The positivity rate has dropped from 17% to 12% since January 9. And the 7-day rolling average has dropped by one-third since the winter peak, from 5,066 on January 9, to 3,312 as of Monday.
“We are on our way down. We’re on our way down the downslope. I’d say we’re about halfway down, not coming down as fast as we went up, and our road has been a bit more meandering,” said Dr. Sara Cody, Santa Clara County Public Health Officer.
Cody said the transition of testing and vaccines from the county to private healthcare providers would happen “in the months ahead”, but offered no specific timeline. Cody underscored that Omicron is the 5th wave, but likely not the last.
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“What we can anticipate is that we will continue to see peaks and valleys. We won’t know of course, how often those peaks will come and how difficult or relatively easy those peaks will be, but we do know that they’ll come,” said Cody.
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