BY SARA TABIN
Daily Post Staff Writer
The Santa Clara County Cities Association sent a letter to the County Supervisors yesterday asking them to ramp up COVID-19 testing so the county can reopen.
The cities said testing is a critical prerequisite for an economic reopening. They said the county must increase testing from about 600 people a day to several thousand people a day so he reopening can happen safely.
Small businesses have been crushed under the county’s stay at home order. The early order appears to have succeeded in preventing the dramatic rise in infections and deaths seen in other parts of the country, but the county has not provided any clear path for when or how things will restart.
The cities included a number of requests for the county including identifying a clear goal or threshold — in unambiguous, quantitative terms — for testing frequency sufficient to safely open schools and most businesses in the county.
“This issue of testing is key to our ability to move forward, to chart a path back to normal,” said Supervisor Joe Simitian.
He said he raised the issue of testing at a March 10 Health and Hospital Committee meeting but hasn’t seen the progress he wants. He said he was told testing is in the hands of the federal government and private labs.
Simitian said it is disappointing that no level of government, from the federal to city level, has accepted testing as its responsibility. He said the county needs to push for testing, either by working with the state or setting up local testing sites independently.
“It’s time for testing, and in fact it’s past time,” he said.
The letter was signed by Campbell Mayor Susan Landry, Cupertino Mayor Steven Scharf, Gilroy Mayor Roland Velasco, Los Altos Mayor Jan Pepper, Los Altos Hills Mayor Michelle Wu, Los Gatos Mayor Marcia Jensen, Milpitas Mayor Rich Tran, Monte Sereno Mayor Liz Lawler, Morgan Hill Mayor Rich Constantine, Mountain View Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga, Palo Alto Mayor Adrian Fine, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Gillmor, Saratoga Mayor Howard Miller and Sunnyvale Mayor Larry Klein.
What’s testing going to tell us that we don’t already know? That there is less than 1/10th of one percent chance of dying from Covid-19? We already know that from the Stanford and USC studies. That children don’t get this bug? We already know that. That people over 90 suffer the most. We know that too.