Riverside County health officials urge not to give up on testing as vaccinations ramp up

Riverside County leaders are putting forth another plea to ask more people to get tested for coronavirus to help us reopen. 

News Channel 3’s Dani Romero has more on where we are in testing and where we need to be. 

As the vaccine remains the forefront in the fight against COVID-19, we can’t forget about testing. 

“We have seen a decline in our testing numbers over time," said Kim Saruwatari, Director of Public Health for Riverside County. "Our testing rate is at 296.3 per 100,000. The state median is at 341 per a 100,000.” 

Since our county tests at a lower rate than the state median, our case rate is adjusted up. 

We’re measuring at 7.8 new cases per 100 thousand per day but adjusted up to 8.3. 

We need to be under 7 for two weeks to drop into the red tier. 

“Why are we testing so much lower?," said Karen Spiegel.

“I think there's just more people are focused on the vaccination and getting the vaccine versus testing," said Saruwatari. "We're just trying to reiterate to people that testing is still critically important because it helps us identify if there are any variants out in the community, it helps us identify illness.” 

But there’s another concern rapid testing sites that are around the valley might not help with our overall numbers. 

“An Antigen test certainly play an important role in the overall response to Covid-19, but they do not give us the benefit of being able to participate in the genomic sequencing to identify variants," said Saruwatari.

County spokesperson, Jose Arballo, explained that only positive results from Antigen tests get reported to public health so all tests don't count toward our total tests. 

“The difference between the two really doesn't matter in the context of which one's better, which one's quicker the PCR test actually counts for our move to try and get out," said Arballo.

County health officials said they are working hard to get those testing numbers up.

“We have a testing team that is doing outreach to businesses. We're partnering with community colleges, for example, testing athletes, according to the new requirements for sports," said Saruwatari. "We are trying to think of creative ways to increase those testing numbers, and we'll continue to do that outreach.” 

We are doing well here in Riverside County in  the other metric that helps us move tiers like the positivity rate. We are now measuring at orange tier levels for that. 

For more information on testing, CLICK HERE.