announcer: this is abc 7 news. kristen: you are watching "getting answers." we ask experts your questions every day at 3:00 to get answers for you in real time. today, we are looking at immigrant voting rights in san francisco. a reporter will join us later in the show to talk about his latest work and how a special ordinance impacts school board elections. speaking of schools, covid is continuing to disrupt bay area schools. today, teachers at multiple oakland public schools are staging sick outs over concerns they will get infected. first, there are a lot of questions about covid testing. when should you test?

what is the best test to use? and what do the results mean? joining us to address those questions and more is infections -- is an infectious disease specialist from stanford. i want to drill down on tests today because people have some questions. in an ideal world, we would have free tests available to all. that is not the case. we are seeing long lines and a run on home test kits. let's address which situations warrant testing. >> that is really important question and particularly important now when we have a shortage of tests where it is hard to go get a test and if you need to get tested, you are waiting in a long line. i would say this particularly important if you are high risk and concerns you may have covid and may have an exposure or symptoms and you think you may need to be evaluated by a physician if you have low oxygen levels. if you're not in any of those

categories and you feel like you are having symptoms or you are at low risk and have been fully vaccinated and boosted and not able to get a test, the best thing you can do is to begin quarantine and try to prevent ongoing transmission. it is unfortunate. i think part of the reason we have to think this way is because it is so hard to get tested and it is putting a strain on our health care capacity in many places. i would say if you are not at a high risk and you think you will be sick from this, you can assume your symptoms that summit covid are more like -- sound like covid are more like covid than something else, that is one place to start. kristen: what if i have the sniffles, runny nose, or a slight cough? the thing about omicron is it seems like a lot of people are reporting symptoms similar to cold symptoms. when do i feel like i really should get a test? >> the safest thing to do is to assume any sort of new sniffles

or sore throat or coughr coughrr anything mild like that should be considered omicron until proven otherwise. proving it otherwise is tough because your antigen test can be negative early on where the pcr tests are more sensitive. if your pcr test is negative, you don't have omicron. if you get tested later, that could be different. kristen: most of us get that you need a bigger viral load to pick up the antigen. the pcr is more sensitive. many of us do not know which one to opt for. maybe certain situations call for the pcr or home test more. walk us through which test is more useful in which situation. >> it all depends on which perspective you are looking at this from. from a public health perspective, the antigen test is useful because you can take it home.

if it is positive, it can be telling you that you could have a high viral load and the company super-spreader and we want to break off the chains of transmission. this is really important. imagine if you were really infectious and you infected tons of people, those people infected tons more. if you had an antigen test you could quickly use and it is positive, you say i might be positive. you can avoid all that from happening. in the journal recently, they published their not too many false positive results with the antigen test which is also reassuring in that way. you could have false negatives saying it is negative but that does not mean you do not have sars-cov-2 building up in your body. there are many studies showing if you test somebody for four or five days from exposure, you are more likely to pick it up then if you did it one time after exposure. when is the best time to test?

if you were exposed today, it is unlikely you will test positive for a couple of days because it does take time for the virus to build up. if you are vaccinated and have previous infection, it could take longer. it can be tricky. most helpful thing is if you have multiple tests and can spread them out over multiple days. kristen: quickly tell me antigen or pcr. he found that classmate or coworker is positive and you want to take a test. >> are you able to take either? kristen: yes, assuming you have access to either. >> if you could take either and you wait a couple of days, i would opt to take the pcr. it is the more sensitive test. on negative, i would say you are safe. kristen: if you want to make sure you're negative before you go to a poker party? >> rapid antigen could be sufficient. it is almost like a day pass.

with omicron, we are seeing early antigen test are negative when you can still transmit. we are seeing that coming out. i would say antigen test, but if you can wear a mask, that would be ideal still. question: you just came back from traveling and you want to make sure you have not caught anything before you go back to work or school. >> if you have antigen test youu can take daily, that will be more helpful. if you are able to get a pcr tests four or five days out and it is negative, that is more definitive to say you do not have the virus. if you are only doing one antigen test and saying i'm clear for the week, that is not how it is helpful. kristen: let's say somebody had an infection and they are recovered. it is time for them to exit isolation but they want to be cautious so they want to take a test. is antigen or pcr better in that situation? >> in that situation, antigen would be better because pcr tests can detect dead virus and

shedding for weeks afterwards but you cannot transmit the virus. for a long time, we saw people testing positive for weeks thereafter but they did not have active virus. the rapid antigen test would be better. it is helping you say you do not have a. large viral load at that time. kristen: you can almost say pcr would be harmful because it is signaling you should not go out but you are fine. >> it is important to know how to interpret the tests. even in the hospital come some will use cycle threshold. these are proxies to tell you if you have live, replicating virus or just detecting dead virus. we deal with this daily. everyone is getting tested. we have to know how to interpret those. kristen: i have heard of people doing nasal rinse is to test

negative. is that for real? is there ever a legitimate reason to do that? >> i would not say that is real. we have to use the tests as indicated. and finding ways to make the test short negative is not helpful. you

people. these have the best source control. you should isolate the best you can. this is difficult for people to be away from others. you need to do what you can to

improve ventilation and avoid crowds. do a date -- do whatever you can to avoid infecting others. kristen: do not fly home until you're negative? >> follow protocols. i would not be infecting others. kristen: thank you so much for your time today. really appreciate it. next, we will talk about oakland teachers who are staging a sick out today over covid and the protocol they think the school district is not taking.

look into that. kristen: welcome back. teachers and multiple oakland schools are staging sick out over concerns they will get infected with covid and bring it home to loved ones.

this comes after more than 600 san francisco teachers called out yesterday. teachers are saying they do not feel the districts have done enough to keep them safe. joining us to talk about that and the challenges oakland unified is facing is john. how many oakland teachers were out sick today? >> today, right around 500. kristen: how many schools had to be nonoperational because of that? >> we had 12 schools, nine high schools, two middle schools, and one lemon tree schools that were not operational. we did not have students on campus. kristen: open but no students on campus. what about childcare? >> that is one of the big challenges we face when something like this happens. it puts a lot of of of of o

a serious bind because they still have to go to work on a day like today and they may not have access to childcare on short notice. unfortunately, we were not able to do anything to support families. kristen: with 12 schools, how many students did this impact? >> about 8400 students. nine of them were high school. a vast majority were older. two of the schools were middle schools. we are talking 12 and up. hopefully, most of those kids were self-sufficient. one of the big things we say is the reason this is unauthorized and we do not want this to happen is if we are talking about safety of kids, this is not helping. when we have them in school, we have them in controlled environments where everybody is wearing masks, most people are vaccinated, and we have all the ppe and air purification in place, we feel like when you take all of the kids out of that

situation, if they are at home, great, but some of the kids may not be at home and maybe in greater harm's way because they are not in those controlled environments. they are not with a select few number of people. that is one of the concerns we have in my we do not want to see this happen again. kristen: i understand you saying the school environment is relatively safe and you have taken steps to make it even more so. do you think there is some validity to their concerns? could the district do more? are you considering doing more? >> with regard to some of the things i have heard, and a lot of this has come secondhand from the media because the media has been talking to the union. the demands i have heard our enhanced masking. we have delivered kn this week to schools. those are for all of our staff. that is one of the things they

want. we are making this available. as soon as we get them, we will be delivering kn95 masks for students as well. the testing is very available, as you are well aware. we made home tests available to pretty much all of our students before winter break. that was helpful for a lot of people to know if they are positive and to keep them at home and recovering and protecting others from possibly getting this disease. with our enhanced air purification and filtration in our schools, we feel like what we are doing has us in a position where we are one of the safest places where kids could be. kristen: with regards to the masks, i know you provided the kn95's to teachers. you are trying to procure them for all the kids. can you ensure there will be continuity for kids to have the

kn95's to start the semester? a lot of kids cannot afford them. will that be there for them? >> we will supply as many as we can. can we supply one or two for every student every day? no, but we will supply as many as we can. kristen: it is great that you sent home the antigen test with kids. will there be testing going forward, regular, on-site,, weekly or something else? >> is there testing every day at every school? no, there is not, but there is testing available every day during the course of the week at various locations across the district. our families, students, staff sign up to get tested. that is great. we have mobile testing that goes to different locations for a variety of reasons. there are a variety of other locations in the community they can go to. clinics, hospitals, primary care providers, etc.

all that said, testing is very available. it is not as available as it would be if you could go to the store and buy the home test because we know those are in short supply right now. but we do feel we are providing a good service in that sense. kristen: i know oakland unified has a substitute shortage like many other districts. that is just a fact. if you continue to have sick outs like these with teachers being sick, how likely is it that you may have to go remote for a while? >> that is a question i honestly cannot answer. we feel like the protections we have in place are going to prevent some kind of scenario you are predicting. is something more severe possible? sure. i think it is likely? i certainly hope it does not happen anytime soon. as we have been hearing recently, it sounds like maybe

if we are lucky, omicron will come and go quickly. hopefully, we get on the other site of this quickly and will not have to deal with any kind of those scenarios. kristen: that is my hope as well. as a parent, believe me, i get that. what are you making preparations for possibly going remote just in case? >> right now, there is no vehicle from the state allowing us to go completely remote. that would involve -- let's say for the sake of argument that worst-case scenario happens and we have to shut down for two weeks. there is no way for us to get funding from the state to do that. the state has not allowed us to do that. there would have to be a change at the state level for that to happen. right now, we do not expect it to happen. we feel like we have the protections in place to avoid that. hopefully that is what happens. we did shift two years ago very quickly over the course of the weekend to more remote learning.

if it comes down to it, i think we would be able to. at this point, we know all too well what remote learning looks like. i am sure we would be able to switch if we had to. hopefully, it does not come to that. kristen: the plan for next monday, everything normal, everything open? >> business as usual is what we expect if we do not hear anything else about other labor actions. kristen: thank you so much for updating us. really appreciate it. we will be right back with a journalist with the

kristen: abc 7 is partnering with the new "san francisco standard" to showcase their reporting on the city. our news organizations share the mission of building a better bay area. one important piece of that is to tell the stories of the successes and struggles of all of our diverse communities.

today, we are focusing on the san francisco school board recall election and reporte the reporter who covers hyper local issues important to the asian-american community joins us. happy new year. thank you for joining us. i saw your latest article in the "san francisco standard." it is about the chinese-american community's involvement in the recall election. traditionally, getting that segment of the population involved in elections has been a challenge but not so with this recall coming up according to your latest article. there is so much interest. why do you think that is? >> on new year's day, i was doing a story in chinatown interviewing a lot of monolingual chinese parents. we know the san francisco school board has been in a lot of controversy in the national spotlight. there are growing interest from local parents paying attention to the local school board election.

they are very eager to stories, noncitizen parents are eligible to be voting in this school board election. those parents will be the first time voting in the u.s. after living here. for 20 years. kristen: that part a lot of people do not know about. what had to happen in san francisco to enable noncitizens to vote in the school board election here? >> san francisco is a really diverse city with progressive politics. i think there is a movement for over a decade to push for noncitizen voting rights for noncitizens living in san francisco because we have a lot of immigrants here. if you are not a citizen, you are not eligible to be voting in local elections.

in 2016 after more than 15 years of the movement, the battle, san francisco voters passed a charter amendment allowing noncitizen parents to be able to vote in local school board elections. we are talking about people with green cards, permanent residents, and also people with visa and people seeking asylum and also refugees and undocumented immigrants. all of these parents who have a kid under 19 years old are able to vote in school board elections. that way a lot more parents can weigh in on public school issues. it is the first time noncitizen parents are able to vote. also in 2020 and the upcoming february school board recall election. kristen: fascinating. this article is viewable not only in english. i think we need to point this out to our viewers.

this is very important. it is also in chinese. not just in chinese. you can actually choose which type of chinese. tell us about this. >> on new year's day, i was doing a story. i was interviewing those parents on san francisco chinatown streets in cantonese and mandarin. i was thinking there is no reason for me to write a story they could not understand, so, "the standard decided to publish the story in chinese. our first ever chinese language story. i have been writing chinese my whole life. i am enjoying the opportunity to be writing in both chinese and english. also, i have been telling immigrant stories. the first step is to have someone to tell the story. the next step is to make the story accessible and available in different languages every san franciscan. kristen: that is fantastic.

han li, thank you so much. congratulations on publishing your articles in both languages. we are excited to continue our partnership and highlighting anyone working toward the same mission we have here. "the standard" 's insightful reporting (son) fixed. no charge. ah, that's my son. he always takes care of his mama. ooh, what's up with granny's casserole? (mom) it's for after your uncle joe's funeral. my brother didn't have a life insurance policy. i hear there's a collection to help aunt adele. (mom) yeah. a funeral costs north of $9,000 these days. that's a hefty bill for family to pay if there's no life insurance check to help. wow. makes you think, doesn't it? (mom) which reminds me, i've been meaning to tell you, i got that 995 plan from colonial penn.

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