SLO County Public Health Officer Addresses COVID-19 Cases, Rumors, Vaccine Increases • Atascadero News

San Luis Obispo — Dr. Penny Borenstein, Public Health Officer, San Luis Obispo County, said the county’s COVID-19 cases “continue to give us a pause.”

Borenstein held a weekly COVID-19 briefing on Wednesday, December 16th to report the county case count — 195 new cases, 2 deaths, 29 hospitalized in the intensive care unit, 1,523 Active.

The total number of cases in the county was 8,090, which was 7,071 a week ago.

The number of counties slowed as 179 new cases were reported on Thursday, two more died, 27 were hospitalized (including eight in the ICU), and 1,633 active cases were reported. Showed no signs.

Eight COVID-19 deaths have been reported in the last three days, six on Tuesday, two on Wednesday and Thursday, and an astonishing proportion by Borenstein.

“The other six new deaths in the last 24 hours have yet to reach the total number as they are awaiting confirmation, but unfortunately they are at the pace of death we are seeing. , This is the most annoying statistic, “Borenstein said. “Obviously, it’s more than statistics. Our hearts are directed at families experiencing this.”

Eighteen COVID-19s died in SLO County this month. In addition to the dead, Borenstein said the county was coping with 21 outbreaks. This is the best for the county. They operate the entire range, but are primarily located in housing facilities for the elderly, elderly housing with care, other care facilities, fire departments, prisons, state hospitals, and county governments.

“We see first responders getting sick, so we do everything we can to avoid contributing to the spread of the disease, keep first responders safe, and where we are. We hope you continue to respond to calls to keep hospitals safe, and we have begun to see some of our most important hospital workers test positive for COVID. ” She said.

Borenstein begged for two consecutive weeks to help people slow down spread by wearing masks and keeping a social distance.

“I think you can hear gravity and tone in my words related to this,” she said. “The threat is now, it’s in our county, and if you’re not paying attention, this is certainly the moment to do so.”

With Christmas and New Year approaching, Borenstein used slides to explain the patterns of concern. After Halloween, the county surged in incidents, then leveled off, and after Thanksgiving the incidents surged again.

“We don’t want the same impact on our community after the coming Christmas and New Year holidays,” she said. “We need to double reducing the daily onslaught of new cases in the community. It also helps our business return to business if we can control the disease. Probably. “

Borenstein spent much of his weekly briefing dealing with rumors and misinformation.

COVID-19 is fake or exaggerated

“Again, I’ll give you a death certificate,” she said. “If you just want to see it, 300,000 Americans have died of the disease since March.”

Case count accuracy

“I heard that 99.9 percent of people are doing well with this illness,” she said. “It’s not true when it comes to deaths. I’ve also heard that most incident reports are inaccurate. That’s also incorrect. The PCR test is a gold standard and uses this test locally and worldwide. Of all the tests performed, the false positive rate is very low. In fact, the antigen test has more false positives, so it is not used because it has 85% accuracy in this county. Or I don’t recommend it. I also miss the positives. The PCR tests we’re talking about can be either false positives or false negatives. “

Cycle threshold

“I’ve heard a bit about this, but it’s the threshold of the cycle that the test is inaccurate to detect people who aren’t currently infected,” she said. “That may be true, but I’ve said this in the past, the tests are looking for viruses, but the PCR tests are looking for viruses, not whether they are alive or dead. As a result, there are some cases where some of the detected organisms remain, even though they are actually in the recovery phase. However, if the cycle threshold is high, the reliability of the active infection is low. These high value cycle thresholds are a very small percentage of all tests performed. “

“I know this will be a little unstable, so I’m happy to be able to deal with it further, but I wanted to deal with it head-on,” she added. “I’ve heard for weeks that tests are unreliable due to cycle thresholds. Dialogue with anyone who wants to talk about cycle thresholds is the seriousness we see in our county or the world It is very important as another way to show that the number of cases of illness is exaggerated. “

Fake result

“I keep listening to people saying that people who haven’t been tested are getting false results,” she said. “They are given the text that they haven’t been there and haven’t taken the test, but the test was negative. I think that’s very old news. Quite a few months ago. A few cases have occurred due to a computer malfunction that caused it, but it hasn’t been so for quite some time in our community, or as far as I know, anywhere in California. “

Borenstein reiterated that he was open to talking to people about these recurring rumors.

Finally, Borenstein said the county had given 1,950 doses of Pfizer vaccine and will begin vaccination on Friday. More Pfizer doses were expected to arrive next week. The county also expected to obtain a dose of Moderna as soon as it obtained an emergency use authorization.

Borenstein has shown that vaccination begins with healthcare professionals and emergency personnel. She said the county public health was inquired about the vaccine and asked people to be patient.

“We are getting a lot of people ready to accept it, and that’s great news,” Borenstein said. “I also want to be patient with people. We will post information on our website about when different sectors of the community will have vaccines available and need to be coordinated there. This will last for months, not weeks. “

Relation