People in line waiting for the Binax test. Photo by Lydia Chávez

While citywide positivity rates are just under 5 percent, the Latinx positivity rate at the 24th Street BART Plaza after seven days of testing is 11 percent, while the non-white positivity rate is 6 percent.

The high numbers indicate a continuing surge, researchers said.

So far, the research and testing campaign led by UCSF and the Latino Task Force has tested 4,553 residents and found 445 residents tested positive. Some 73 percent of those tested identified as Latinx.

We will be updating these numbers daily. The campaign is testing every day of the week, except Thursdays and Saturdays, starting at 9 a.m. The testing will run until Jan. 29.

Read More about the campaign

Read more about The Latino Task Force and the lead researcher

This article was supported in part by University of Southern California Annenberg and the USC Center of Health Data Fellowship.

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REPORTER. Annika Hom is our inequality reporter through our partnership with Report for America. Annika was born and raised in the Bay Area. She previously interned at SF Weekly and the Boston Globe where she focused on local news and immigration. She is a proud Chinese and Filipina American. She has a twin brother that (contrary to soap opera tropes) is not evil.

Follow her on Twitter at @AnnikaHom.

Founder/Executive Editor. I’ve been a Mission resident since 1998 and a professor emeritus at Berkeley’s J-school since 2019 when I retired. I got my start in newspapers at the Albuquerque Tribune in the city where I was born and raised. Like many local news outlets, The Tribune no longer exists. I left daily newspapers after working at The New York Times for the business, foreign and city desks. Lucky for all of us, it is still there.

As an old friend once pointed out, local has long been in my bones. My Master’s Project at Columbia, later published in New York Magazine, was on New York City’s experiment in community boards.

Right now I'm trying to figure out how you make that long-held interest in local news sustainable. The answer continues to elude me.

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6 Comments

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  1. Aren’t people who are turning up for tests likely to believe that they are infected?

    In other areas, some people who are just phobic about it (e.g hypochondriac) will be tested (although they have neither symptoms nor probable exposure). So, I would think, that this would push down the percentage.

    But in the Mission, people don’t have the luxury of taking a test unless there is a probable reason to worry. So the rate will be higher.

    Then there are the other socioeconomic and cultural factors that could lead to a higher rate.

    Am I wrong?

    Reply

  2. Does this testing lead to contact tracing and isolation for those who test positive? Or was that but a pop up, pilot project?

    Reply

    1. Prior articles explained the Latino Task Force group calls a person with their results, they’re instructed to quarantine and they’re offered help like gift cards to order a delivery of groceries, etc.

      Reply

  3. only, what the PC crowd calls Latinx get tested?
    what about the indigenous/native american/first nation residents?
    many of those perceived as latin are not latin but members of different maya people (from central america and mexico) who often don’t speak spanish (a latin language) at all or only rudimentary.
    if you want to be oh so PC with your stupid Latinx thing then don’t call those people that designation.

    Reply

  4. The term Latinx didn’t exist a year ago and should never have been invented. Use it only for Hispanic sex acts. You already have Hispanic for gender neutral, Latino for males and Latino for females, get a clue.

    Reply

    1. Above I erred when I wrote “Latino for females” when I meant to type “Latina for females.”

      Sorry about that.

      Reply