Friday’s Coffee with the Summit County Council included a discussion about COVID-19 testing and the projections of how and when life would return to normal in Summit County.
Summit County Public Health Director Dr. Rich Bullough said the data on testing accuracy shows there are about 30% that show false-negatives on people who have later been confirmed to have COVID-19. He says the inaccuracy of the tests are universal and it’s a concern that communities don’t have real data to model healthcare needs as the virus spreads.
"What that tells us is the actions we’ve taken, the orders, they remain the critical focus point of this because if you can't, even if you ramp up mass testing and you're getting a 30% false negative rate, you got a major problem."
The importance of everyone isolating and distancing, regardless of any symptoms, is critical to slow the arc of the illness spreading further.
Bullough told the audience the antibody tests being developed will likely be used on first responders and clinicians. He said knowing who has antibodies could be an indicator of community spread, useful for preserving PPE, and knowing who is at lesser risk of exposure.
“Moving forward, it might have an indicator of where we are with respect to community spread. Ultimately the only thing that’s going to deal with this stuff is once we get to herd immunity. And that’s going to be a combination of people who have vaccines, been vaccinated, or have antibodies and have been exposed. It may be useful because the vaccine is going to be in short supply for some time.”
Bullough said they are continuously looking to other communities nationally and internationally to determine what things should be done and what things should be avoided. One of the key indicators is the spread of the virus, or new cases, which he says may show signs of leveling in Summit County.
“It’s really too early to say if it’s a trend, but we're getting hints that it might be. And then importantly, we want to see that the virus is not as widespread in our community in general as we've been observing and that has to do a lot with testing.”
Bullough is taking input from public health experts, clinicians, data people and the economic and business sectors as they make decisions about stay at home directives and social distancing guidelines.
“Our data are getting better though. The state has told us that next week we will have an entirely new data set that is more specific to some of the questions that we need answered. And so, we’re taking this really seriously. I can tell you, we're not there yet.”
Summit County Council Chair Doug Clyde said the lack of good data makes it very difficult to forecast the path to normalcy. With 40,000 residents in Summit County, only 470 have been tested.
“We know about the condition of 1% of our population and only that 1%, which essentially presented with some sort of illness when they came to get tested. So, we know that it's broad spread throughout the County we just don't know how many people that involved.”
Bullough said once more community wide tests are available, he hopes the clinical system will continue to prioritize who is tested.
“I am still hoping that they come through the clinical channel and that this isn't a mass rush by communities to just randomly test everybody.
Bullough believes essential workers, including grocery store employees and those who serve the elderly should be the first in line as broad-based testing becomes available.
