Dr Monica Gandhi reflects on Berkeley’s critics

[ad_1]

Dr Monica Gandhi, the infectious disease expert who criticized public health officials’ handling of COVID issues with the Cal football program last week, would like a recovery.

“I shouldn’t have commented without knowing the details,” Gandhi told the Bay Area News Group in an email exchange on Sunday.

The Bears were shorthanded for the Arizona game on Nov.6 and were unable to play USC on Nov. 13 due to a barrage of positive tests.

Gandhi is the Deputy Head of the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases and Global Medicine at UCSF. In an interview with KPIX last week, she strongly chastised Berkeley Public Health’s decision to request testing of the entire football program – even asymptomatic vaccinated individuals.

“I have no panic as a public health person, as an infectious disease doctor, of 44 healthy people who are fully vaccinated and who may have a little virus in their nose during a very test. sensitive, ”she told KPIX at the time.

“It’s not an epidemic, it doesn’t mean they got sick, and it doesn’t mean the vaccines don’t work. This means that our public health strategy in this case was turned off and they were performing mass testing on people who did not need it. “

Since then, new information has come to light, including three more positive tests.

There were 47 positive tests as part of the program of 150 people (approximately), including players, coaches and staff. Of the positives, 31 were symptomatic, although it is not known how many players – they are said to be 99% vaccinated – tested positive or exhibited symptoms.

Highly sensitive PCR machines were used for the tests, which took place over several weeks. Machines can detect viruses that are inactive for up to 90 days and thus produce false positive results. For this reason, PCR testing is not recommended for COVID-positive people for up to three months after infection. Cal had not undergone a team-wide PCR test since the 2020-21 school year, according to a source.

When asked if the health officials at Berkeley and Cal made the right decision to test the entire team and if his review was fair, Gandhi replied:

“I will also be posting publicly on Twitter to make sure I try to get a broader perspective on the endemicity and media coverage of the cases and I shouldn’t have commented on an evolving situation.”

In a long thread on her Twitter feed (@ MonicaGandhi9), she included the following comment Sunday at 2:34 p.m.:

“It is worth noting that the details of the football Cal outbreak are emerging in terms of symptomatic / asymptomatic infections (check local news sources for details), so the points made in this article do not relate to football. but the change in thinking reflected by the CDC last week on control and not herd immunity. “

During last week’s interview with KPIX, Gandhi said: “If we don’t have more confidence in vaccines, we are going to be in a ‘never-ending pandemic’.”

The Bears should be healthy enough to play Stanford in Big Game on Saturday.

– East Bay Times editorial page editor Daniel Borenstein contributed to this article.

[ad_2]