Dr. Birx in Rochester

Founding fathers who put the country together."

Doctor deborah birx ?

"*?

"* th coronavirus response coordinator for the white house ?

"*?

"* met with state a local health officials today at rochester community and technical college to better understand olmsted county's response to the pandemic.

Kimt news 3's madelyne watkins was there and she's learning testing remains the key point to slowing the spread.

Community spread continues to increase and a big part of that is due to people who are asymptomatic.

In fact, right here in olmsted county... about 20 percent of the tests that come back positive are from people who are showing no symptoms at all.

"we have power, we can change our future, but it does take all of us.

Even those of us who feel fine, even those of us who don't believe that the illness would be significant to us.

We all have to play that part and that part really includes us wearing masks."

And it also includes routine testing.

Doctor birx stresses early testing and testing everyone plays a major role in slowing community spread ?

"* even people not showing symptoms. she says setting up sentinel surveillance systems can be a solution to making sure everyone gets tested.

What that means is monitoring the change in health levels among a certain population.

Olmsted county public health director graham briggs tells me setting up routine testing in areas with teachers and those working in long term care facilities is the next step.

"if people start shedding the virus, whether they've got symptoms or not, if we're offering testing once a week and people take us up on that offer, then we detect those cases quickly, a little bit sooner and we've got a little bit better handle as to whatever that at risk population is.

We can show that we're catching cases and making sure that we're not seeing transmission move on from those cases that we might otherwise miss."

In rochester.

Madelyne watkins kimt news 3.

According to rochester community and technical college ?

"* social events are leading to more positive cases on campus.

According to the college's executive director of communication s ?

"* there have been around 50 cases on campus.

To help stop the spread ?

"* he says people on campus need to continue wearing a mask ?

"* practicing social distancing ?

"* and are encourgaed to use the hand sanitizing stations.

Rctc says it is prepared if the number of community if we see the number of cases in our community continue to increase, then we may have to look at returning to all online or more hybrid.

We aren't there yet and we hope not to get to that point but as we learned from this past spring when we had to shift everything to online, we have that structure in place and were ready to pivot, if we have to rctc does not have a formal testing process on its campus.

However, there is a mandatory