5,000 East Bay residents to get test

One of the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic is finding people with the virus who don’t know they have it — either now or in the past.

What if thousands of healthy people could be tested?

That’s how 5,000 East Bay residents will propel the Bay Area’s first study to identify and test a large and representative swath of asymptomatic people. Scientists will take saliva, swab and blood samples from volunteers between the ages of 18 and 60 around the region.

The UC Berkeley initiative, which will begin in early May and continue for up to eight months, will offer insight into the true nature of past viral spread in our region — and whether that changes as we begin to lift social distancing restrictions.

“We’re very excited about this,” said Dr. Eva Harris, UC Berkeley professor of infectious diseases, at a recent UC Berkeley video conference. “We’re going to follow people over time.”

It is part of a growing effort to understand the extent of infection among people who were infected and already have recovered, including those who never got a diagnosis, either because they didn’t feel particularly sick or they couldn’t get an initial test.

About 300,000 flyers in English and Spanish soon will be mailed out to East Bay residents. Anyone who wants to participate will be directed to a website.

From registrants, the researchers will assemble a pool of volunteers — based on age, gender and ZIP code — that represents a demographic and geographic snapshot.

“It essentially will be representative of the population,” said Harris, who is co-leading the research team, “as opposed to what we call a ‘convenient sampling,’ if you just like went to a parking lot in a store.”

They’ll mail those volunteers a little medical kit. It will have all the tools that are needed to do a finger prick for blood, take a sample of saliva and swab mucus from the mouth and nose. Participants will mail the kit back to the team for analysis.

Then the Berkeley lab will analyze the specimens for evidence of viral RNA that the volunteer was carrying at that moment, indicating a current infection, or whether the volunteer has antibodies, revealing exposure in the past.

Some places, like Iceland, are offering viral testing to anyone, including people without symptoms. But as people recover, they vanquish the virus from their system, so this test isn’t helpful beyond the infection period.

Stanford offered antibody testing in a two- day drive- through initiative earlier this month, but it was a one-time snapshot of the virus’s presence in Peninsula and South Bay communities. It now is beginning to offer the test to its health care workers.

The Berkeley team is doing both.

“Our research is the first study in the Bay Area to identify and test a large, representative population of asymptomatic individuals, which will provide much-needed insight into transmission dynamics, the true extent of the community spread and risk factors for infection beyond those tested for COVID-19 at hospitals and clinics,” said Dr. Lisa Barcellos, UC Berkeley professor of epidemiology and biostatistics and team co-leader.

For information on Berkeley Public Health, go to publichealth. berkeley. edu/covid-19.