By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
It appears a classic case of good news/bad news in the disclosing of results from antibody testing of more than 2,300 Buchanan County residents.
Mosaic Life Care reports of the 2,324 county residents tested, only 64 tested positive; 3% of the total.
But the seemingly good news might not be so good for the area, because it discloses Buchanan County is far from herd immunity against the coronavirus.
Mosaic Life Care Chief Quality Officer, Dr. Edward Kammerer, says with the area far from herd immunity, precautions such as hand washing, mask wearing, and social distancing are vital.
“So, what that tells me, unfortunately with only 3% it tells me a few things. It tells us we’re nowhere close to herd immunity inside of St. Joseph and the surrounding area,” Kammerer tells reporters during a news conference at Mosaic. “It means we have to remain vigilant. We have to stay on our game. We still have a long way to go. We have thousands of cases to become herd immune here.”
Twenty of the 64 testing positive were Mosaic employees. Kammerer says that is a good rate, considering that some of Mosaic’s nursing staff and others come in contact with COVID-19 patients. Twelve of the 64 had previously testing positive for COVID-19.
Kammerer says the number and types of persons tested provides a good sample of Buchanan County residents.
Kammerer says though it seems counterintuitive, he is a bit disappointed the testing didn’t disclose a higher percentage of residents having had COVID-19 at some point.
“So, at 3%, that’s an unfortunate aspect. It’s great. It means that our methods and our efforts to quarantine early on were very successful. However, that’s not a sustainable aspect either. We can’t keep America shut down,”’ Kammerer says. “So, we have to learn to move forward in an environment where we don’t have herd immunity and we’re nowhere close to herd immunity.”
The testing lags behind a current surge in both new COVID-19 cases and coronavirus hospitalizations.
St. Joseph health officials report 25 new cases on Thursday after reporting 46 new cases on Wednesday. Mosaic reports 35 COVID-19 patients being treated in the St. Joseph hospital as for Friday morning.
“We have definitely seen a spike in our community,” Kammerer says, focusing especially on the hospitalizations. “All summer long, we pretty much ran 15 to 20 in the hospital. It was like clockwork every day. We have seen in the last two or three weeks a significant increase and we’re now up in the 30s and high 20s on a pretty regular basis.”
Buchanan County used $250,000 of the CARES Act funding sent the county by the state to pay for the antibody testing.