Chief Medical Officer at Eisenhower Health answers coronavirus questions

We continue to bring you answers to coronavirus questions. News Channel 3’s Caitlin Thropay spoke with Chief Medical Officer at Eisenhower Health, Dr. Alan Williamson who provides us answers.

Question: How critical is it for people to get tested for coronavirus even if they are not experiencing any symptoms?

Answer:

“Today is it critical that they get tested? I don’t believe the answer is yes. In the long term, for us to understand how COVID is spreading through the community, to understand who continues to be at risk and in the future to really to able to try to isolate those who are positive and quarantine them so the public can be free go out and conduct their life the way we were used to before COVID-19 then testing will be critical for that,” Williamson told News Channel 3.

Question: How accurate are the tests?

Answer:

“We’re starting to see a little bit more data out there. It’s still very unclear exactly how accurate this test is, how many times the test could be negative when in fact the person actually does have coronavirus or on the other side of the coin how many times is it positive when they really don’t have corona or at least COVID-19 you may have had some other coronavirus and there may have been some cross activity," Williamson said.

Question: Are people without health insurance able to get tested?

“The county is able to test people as far as I understand without insurance coverage but that would be a question that would have to go to the county of public health and through their testing site. They would try to arrange for those people to access what resources they can in order to be tested,” Williamson said.

Question: Are there any misconceptions about testing you feel people need to know about?

Answer:

“I think right now there’s a little bit too much excitement, ‘I should be tested so I know I’m perfectly fine,’ and that’s great except tomorrow you may well become infected so there’s no guarantee if the test is negative today that you’re going to be okay. Something bad could happen tomorrow, next week, next month,” Williamson said.

Question: Overall, how is testing going here in the valley and what’s Eisenhower's role in that?

Answer:

“Even patients that are completely asymptomatic or individuals in the community that are completely asymptomatic can potentially be tested. At Eisenhower right now we’re not capable of doing that. We don’t have the supplies available to us yet to be able to test everyone routinely,” Williamson said.

Question: How long does it take for someone to get their test results back?

Answer:

“We have the capacity to do the test here at Eisenhower as of about two weeks ago but unfortunately we have a relatively limited capability of doing that in terms of the numbers we can do. So we try to be selective in patients where we believe knowing the answer quickly is going to be most critical to us. If it’s less clear that we need to have that answer right away we do send that test out to outside laboratories and the turnaround time varies from laboratory to laboratory and day to day but typically is anywhere from two to as many as four days,” Williamson said.

Question: If one person’s test comes back negative, how long should they wait to get tested again?

Answer:

“If I’m tested then maybe I’m concerned maybe the next day for some reason I was exposed, if you go out and immediately get tested the odds are it’s not going to be positive so it’s typically going to take anywhere from two to seven days after exposure before we begin to develop symptoms and typically once the patients begin to have symptoms then we will start seeing the PCR tests become positive,” Williamson said.

You can send in your questions by emailing coronavirus@kesq.com