If people who’ve already been vaccinated can still get — and still transmit — the Delta variant, thus infecting others without knowing it, shouldn’t everyone, vaccinated and unvaccinated alike, be required to get tested to ensure workplace safety? This question was posed last Tuesday, August 31, when the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors adopted a policy mandating all 4,600 county employees to either be vaccinated or be regularly tested. Vehemently opposing this policy was a room full of vaccination skeptics, civil libertarians, and self-styled conscientious objectors.
“That’s a good question,” answered Mona Miyasato, the county’s CEO. “That’s a great question,” added Dr. Stewart Comer, head of Cottage Health’s Pacific Diagnostics Lab (PDL), just a few days later. But according to both Comer and Miyasato, the answer is that universal testing is not needed at this time.
Here’s why: The vast majority of people testing positive, getting sick, and being hospitalized have not been vaccinated. The number of breakthrough cases — in which vaccinated individuals test positive — still remains relatively low. The case rates per hundred thousand for the unvaccinated in Santa Barbara County hover about 4.5 times higher than those who’ve gotten their shots. For vaccinated workers, Miyasato said, tests would only make sense if they were exhibiting symptoms of COVID; either way, all county employees would be required to wear masks.