San Mateo County Health Officer says the coronavirus response in California is defective
Sara Zendehnam reports.
REDWOOD CITY, Caliph. – San Mateo County Health Officer Scott Morrow says the state made the ‘wrong diagnosis’ in adding the county to the COVID-19 watch list because the oversight framework is flawed.
“Our figures indicate that we are in a relatively stable state due to the spread of the virus. For those who want to drive the spread to zero, this is simply not possible,” said Morrow.
“In the last few weeks, our hospital settings have been stable and / or reduced. Recently, our deaths have been low,” he said.
San Mateo County was added to the state’s COVID-19 review list on July 29 for having a business rate above the state threshold of 100 per 100,000 people. As of Friday, August 7, that number stands at 114.8 according to the County County of Public Health data chart
However, the state confirmed the county’s monitoring list on July 31 to make sure hospital data was accurate. Then the state Department of Health announced Tuesday that there were technical issues and delays with the state’s reporting system, leading to an underreporting of cases.
Even with this data glitch, Morrow said Thursday that he remains of the same opinion, describing the framework as “random” and “constantly changing”, with indications of data quality and consistency and numbers changing that do not reflect reality. He said the framework does not take into account what is happening locally and that San Mateo County’s risk reduction strategies seem to be working.
FILE – Test tubes with blood samples seen in the lab center. According to Sanquin test lab second results, about 5.5% (+/- 0.5%) of Dutch blood donors have developed antibodies against the coronavirus, a modest increase compared to the 3% in a
Therefore, he said, “I feel that the state has made the wrong ‘diagnosis’ and has prescribed the wrong ‘treatment’ for San Mateo County.”
As of August 2, after three consecutive days on the watch list, additional businesses in San Mateo County such as salons, barber shops and fitness centers were forced to close unless they could provide outside or side services.
“I want to apologize to all the companies that were closed this week,” Morrow said. “I do not support these actions and, for San Mateo County, I believe they are misdirected and will cause more harm than good.”
He said barbershops, nail salons and other businesses that need to close are not the main cause of proliferation.
In a statement on July 20, Morrow noted that “seemingly innocent” meetings are scattered because many infections are related to small gatherings of family and friends.
“Our collective best course of action: No meetings outside of immediate household, using extensive face covering and social distance,” Morrow said.
As of Friday, San Mateo County remains on the state monitoring list.
California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr Mark Ghaly gave an update on the COVID-19 data reporting issue on Friday. He said the state would work over the next 48 hours on a backlog of up to 300,000 records.
The CalREDIE (California Reportable Disease Information Exchange) system processes records for all diseases, including COVID-19 test results.
The state will need to separate COVID-19 records, remove duplicates, distinguish between negative and positive test results, and then calculate the positivity figures.
Despite the backlog, Ghaly said no changes to her response policy were based on incomplete data, and trends discussed earlier this week remain the same.
On Monday, Govin Newsom said there was a slight drop in the number of positive cases.
