31 COVID Cases In Malibu Now – Ventura County Buys Blood Tests For Front-Line Workers
Written by 991KBU on May 4, 2020
25 thousand 562 people have been confirmed to be infected in Los Angeles County … 31 of them in the city of Malibu.
The death toll in Los Angeles County is 12 hundred 29.
In Ventura County …. 559 confirmed cases … with an official death toll of 13 there.
Santa Monica Mountains… 15.
Agoura Hills … 31.
Calabasas … 43.
Pacific Palisades … 38.
Santa Monica … 171.
About 1,200 blood antibody tests for the coronavirus are due to arrive starting next week in Ventura County .. according to a report in the Ventura County Star.
Health care workers and others on the front lines of battling the pandemic will be given the tests.
The Ventura County government is purchasing the tests from Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc. of Contra Costa County … in the Bay Area.
The first installment of 192 tests from the company is expected to arrive next week. Another 1,000 are due in the third week of May.
“Our goal is to get 10,000 or more,” County Executive Officer Mike Powers told the newspaper last week.
A panel of county medical and public health specialists chose the Bio-Rad blood tests after they found the Bio-Rad model looked “really good,” Powers said.
After that, the U S Food and Drug Adminsitration apporved the tests.
They are priced at $10 each.
County officials say the test results could provide some peace of mind to workers taking care of infected people, help protect vulnerable seniors and get a picture of who is developing antibodies in the community at large.
Dr. Todd Flosi is chief medical officer at Ventura County Medical Center.
He told the Ventura County Star that much is still unknown.
“We don’t know because we are so early on in this epidemic what a positive test will mean in the long run in terms of the ability to prevent a second infection or maybe make a second infection more mild,” Flosi said Friday.
Emergency room and intensive care nurses and housekeepers who clean patient rooms wil get the first tests …. as well as paramedics.
