Santa Clara County will offer COVID-19 testing through Saturday in San Jose and Gilroy.
These walk-up testing sites provide viral detection free of charge without an appointment, symptoms, insurance or a doctor’s note. The diagnostic assays also come regardless of a person’s immigration status.
Below is a list of where (and when) to access the testing services.
San Jose
1721 E. San Antonio St., San Antonio Elementary School, Gymnasium
1 to 6pm, Tuesday through Friday
9am to 2pm, Saturday
Gilroy
9300 Wren Ave., South County Annex (formerly Del Buono Elementary)
10am to 3pm Tuesday through Friday
Those seeking a test are encouraged to arrive early.
The sites use a wristband system in which people are assigned a testing time later in the day, and all slots are often claimed within hours of availability.
The county pop-up COVID-19 testing sites run by Valley Medical Center have been popular. Approximately 42,000 people were tested at the sites in July.
There are more than 50 COVID-19 test locations in Santa Clara County, including those at community centers and schools, hospitals and clinics, and mobile testing centers. Summary data are published on the County’s COVID-19 Testing Dashboards.
For those with health insurance, the county sites are not the only available opportunity to get a fast and free COVID-19 test.
All healthcare providers are required to offer free testing to members who:
- Have COVID-19 symptoms, including but not limited to cough, shortness of breath, difficulty breathing, fever, chills, fatigue, aches, headache, sore throat or loss of smell or taste.
- Have had close contact with a person who tested positive for COVID-19.
- Are at higher risk of exposure to COVID-19 because they work in frontline settings (including first responders, food service workers, delivery workers, public transportation operators and grocery store clerks), regularly ride mass transit or have recently attended a mass gathering.
Healthcare providers covered by the order include all acute care hospitals, and all clinics and urgent care facilities operated by organizations that run an acute care hospital in the county or elsewhere. Clinics and hospitals included are those operated by: Kaiser Permanente, Sutter/Palo Alto Medical Foundation, El Camino Hospital, Good Samaritan Hospital, Regional Medical Center and Stanford Healthcare as well as county facilities.
> Walk-up COVID-19 Testing Sites in San Jose, Gilroy Tuesday-Saturday
It would be interesting and useful if Santa Clara County would report which COVID-19 tests they are using and some information on the accuracy of the tests.
What are the rates of “false positives” and “false negatives” for the tests?
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/symptoms-testing/testing.html
“Two kinds of tests are available for COVID-19: viral tests and antibody tests.
– A viral test tells you if you have a current infection.
– An antibody test might tell you if you had a past infection. An antibody test might not show if you have a current infection because it can take 1–3 weeks after infection for your body to make antibodies. Having antibodies to the virus that causes COVID-19 might provide protection from getting infected with the virus again. If it does, we do not know how much protection the antibodies might provide or how long this protection might last.
If you test positive or negative for COVID-19 on a viral or an antibody test, you still should take preventive measures to protect yourself and others.”
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So, if an antibody test ” might not show if you have a current infection because it can take 1–3 weeks after infection for your body to make antibodies”, then what’s the point?
Some more useful information on COVID-19 testing:
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/how-accurate-are-covid-19-diagnostic-and-antibody-tests
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It’s also possible to administer the [RT-PCR] test too late, after the body has successfully fought off the disease, according to Dr. William Schaffner, professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Tennessee and medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.
The test must also be administered properly, which means inserting the swab 3 inches or so to reach the cavity where the nasal passages meet the pharynx.
“If you’ve had this test and it wasn’t uncomfortable, it wasn’t done correctly,” Schaffner told Healthline.
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False-negative results from antigen tests may range as high as 20 to 30 percent.
“If an antigen test is positive, you can believe it,” said Wojewoda. “If it’s negative, you have to question that.”
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Antibody tests are not diagnostic tests.
“Antibodies can take several days or weeks to develop after you have an infection and may stay in your blood for several weeks after recovery,” according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)Trusted Source. “Because of this, antibody tests should not be used to diagnose an active coronavirus infection.”
Antibody tests also aren’t terribly useful.
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Antibody tests also are subject to false-positive results.
“The job of antibodies is to stick to things, so they can create a positive test result if they react to a different type of coronavirus,” said Wojewoda.
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“Antibody tests show the most promise if the way the human body controls the coronavirus is with an antibody response,” Wojewoda added. “If not, it doesn’t make any difference.”
For example, she said, it’s T cells, not antibodies, that help the body fight an HIV infection.
“That’s another piece of data that needs to be figured out before testing can be figured out,” Wojewoda said.
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Johns Hopkins University
> When states report testing numbers for COVID-19 infection, they should not include serology or antibody tests. Antibody tests are not used to diagnose active COVID-19 infection and they do not provide insights into the number of cases of COVID-19 diagnosed or whether viral testing is sufficient to find infections that are occurring within each state.
So, WHAT KIND OF TESTS is Santa Clara County using to report it’s “Cumulative Case Count”?
It doesn’t seem to be stated anyway on the Santa Clara County Public Health dashboard:
https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx
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> Deaths provided in this dashboard do not necessarily mean that the individuals died from COVID-19.
Really? Counting deaths from gun shots, motorcycle accidents, and suicides from lockdown despair would probably make the cumulative COVID-19 death toll appear larger. And more alarming.
You post all over and hold yourself out to be an Expert on Everything.
What are your credentials ” outside the bubble”?
> What are your credentials ” outside the bubble”?
My credentials: I’m a tiny little inconsequential pissant.
So, why are you paying any attention?
But, I do know how to copy quotes from experts.
How about you, Willow? What are your credentials? Does your social worker know you are posting on the internet?
You’re becoming more consequential by the day Bubbles, keep up the good fight.