October 27, 2020 — For most of the pandemic, the county has been able to send hundreds of surveillance tests every week to a lab at UCSF, free of charge. The community health clinics in Fort Bragg, the south coast, Anderson Valley and Long Valley have offered these tests for months to people who can’t get to the OptumServ site in Ukiah. The contract with UCSF was supposed to last until the end of the calendar year. But just last week, UCSF terminated that contract, based on unspecified legal advice, according to Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren. Now the clinics and the county are scrambling to come up with another way to test asymptomatic people outside of Ukiah.
