More than 1,600 volunteer for virus test in UCSF study
A fourday blitz of coronavirus testing in San Francisco’s Mission District was halfway complete Sunday evening, with about 1,650 residents this weekend agreeing to be poked, prodded and perhaps dealt some unsettling news in the name of science.
In the firstofits kind study, researchers at UCSF hope to ultimately test as many as 5,700 residents to see how many in a sample of the community are infected by or may have recovered from the coronavirus, and to learn how it spreads. The goal is to add to a body of potentially lifesaving information from a neighborhood hit harder by the coronavirus than anywhere else in the city.
“We have no vaccine. We have no proven treatment right now,” said study leader Dr. Diane Havlir, chief of the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases and Global Medicine at UCSF. “What we can do (is): We can empower ourselves with knowledge about what’s happening with the epidemic. And the way we can do that is by testing and responding.”
UCSF chose the neighborhood for this project, called Unidos en Salud (United in Health), because of its high population density and large Latino population. Both factors make it a highrisk area for spread of the virus.
Latino residents make up just 15% of San Francisco’s total population but accounted for 28% of the city’s confirmed COVID19 cases as of April 24, according to San Francisco Department of Public Health data.
Throughout the past few days, dozens of volunteers outfitted in masks and face shields have saturated a fourbyfour block section in the heart of the Mission District in a campaignstyle recruitment tour. They’re knocking on doors and hitting the phone banks enlisting residents as young as 4 to take part in the study.
Jon Jacobo of the Latino Task Force for COVID19 said watching volunteers show up to recruit — and potentially expose themselves in the process — has been “remarkable to witness.” Each day, about 50 people have turned up to knock on some 1,400 doors, spanning the area from 23rd Street and South Van Ness Avenue to Cesar Chavez and Harrison streets.
Jacobo, who lives in the census tract studied and also acts as chairman of the UCSF
Study Committee, said there has been some reluctance to get tested.
The Latino community has fallen victim to a lot of scams, he said, and some volunteers need to build that extra layer of trust. Also, people don’t like getting Qtipped up their nose.
“But when we highlight how important it is to have the proper knowledge, I feel like that shifts their hesitation,” Jacobo said.
The data will likely spike the number of confirmed cases in San Francisco, where as of Sunday 15,110 people had been tested and 1,408 tested positive. To date, 22 San Francisco residents have died from COVID19.
The results will be analyzed alongside those of a similar study taking place in Bolinas, a coastal community in Marin County made up of mostly white residents.
Until Tuesday, volunteers at popup testing sites in three locations in the Mission District will continue to collect samples using nasal swabs for tests of an active coronavirus infection, as well as fingerprick blood samples for antibody testing. The antibody test can indicate past exposure even for those who didn’t experience symptoms.
Those who test positive for the coronavirus will get followup calls from UCSF infectious disease experts, who are partnering with the San Francisco Department of Public Health and the Latino Task Force for COVID19. Volunteers will help guide those infected through the process of isolation and quarantining, trace their contacts, and connect them with medical support.
People who test negative will be asked to continue abiding by shelterinplace and socialdistancing mandates because of the possibility of false negative test results and “general lack of information about the potential for reinfection with the disease,” officials said.