Local Redding doctor weighs in on coronavirus testing

Local Redding doctor weighs in on coronavirus testing

Clinic): we're doing the testing here outside of the building.

Hilltop medical clinic has been responsible for testing < of the 2* patients that tested positive for covid 19 in shasta county.

The clinic has 80 testing kits with more on the way idr. pierce believes it's time to relax testing standards and consider testing al* people with respitory infections.

Sot(dr.mark pierce): in redding, california, i believe we can and should start to do the*test and trac* more aggressively.

Let's keep it out of our community so we can get back to work.

Test and trac* means---testing people who may be sick, identifying those who test positive, and responding quickly to help them and prevent the spread sot (dr. pierce): if one of those persons is sick.

We wanna know why that person is sick.

And if it's covid, we want to know who they were in contact with, so we can monitor them very closely and test them as soon as they show any signs.

Karen: there may be people that could, would disagree with you and say "no we should keep "saving" these tests.

What do you have to say to them?

Sot(dr. pierce): there is a balance that we need to do.

We're not testing asymptomtic people because tests themselves have problems. you can have false positive and false negative tests, so you need other symptoms to be able to interpret the test.

But i disagree, we're ramping up we're not in the same situation we were four weeks ago.

Now---hilltop medical clinic is one of several clinics that's switched to telemedicine --- sot: all people are using telemedicine to first decide what needs to occur next?

Is it necessary for the person to come into the clinic or can this be handled through the phone, again to decrease during this time period.

Hilltop medical clinic curretnly tests 10 to 15 patients a day--- with results available in less than three days.

Dr. pierce tells me the