As Santa Ana continues to be Orange County’s hotspot for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, local officials are urging its residents to help control the spread.
Santa Ana held a virtual town hall meeting to address how city residents can protect themselves from the CCP virus, commonly called the novel coronavirus, in the wake of a rapid increase in cases.
Santa Ana has recorded 33,525 cases of the virus since the pandemic began, handily outpacing any other Orange County city. Anaheim has had 30,631 cases.
Conversely, Laguna Beach has identified 559 cases as of Jan. 8.
During the Jan. 8 event, Dr. Sarah Lopez stressed the importance of taking precautions against the virus, quarantining if exposed to it, and accessing proper testing.
She called the diagnostic PCR tests the “gold standard” to determine if you have the virus. She also said the antibody test tells you if you have been exposed.
Lopez said that after symptoms develop, infected individuals must wait another five to seven days before getting a CCP virus test, otherwise the test will come back as a false negative.
Following the incubation period, an infected person will become contagious within one or two days before symptoms develop, Lopez said.
Common symptoms include: fever, cough, fatigue, and loss of smell, difficulty breathing, wheezing, shivering and chills, aching, headache, sore throat, joint pains, confusion, dizziness, and diarrhea.
Lopez said that anyone who has been exposed to someone with the CCP virus should quarantine for a period of 14 days.
Individuals who have tested positive for the CCP virus should still get vaccinated, Lopez said.
Lopez said that the vaccine should be widely available this summer.
“If 65% of people get vaccinated by June...we would basically by the end of this year, have herd immunity,” Lopez said.
