Dr. Gulla Shares Findings on COVID-19 Testing

Dr. Mandy Gulla / Contributed Photo

Dr. Mandy Gul­la, Med­ical Direc­tor at Liv­ing Med­ical Arts PLLC in Fri­day Har­bor, recent­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in an expert pan­el dis­cus­sion at the Wash­ing­ton Asso­ci­a­tion of Natur­o­path­ic Physi­cians’ annu­al conference.

The pan­el dis­cus­sion, mod­er­at­ed by Dr. Tere­sa Richter, was ded­i­cat­ed to updates on Covid-19 test­ing options, sta­tus of vac­cine devel­op­ment, and impacts on health of patients and com­mu­ni­ties. Besides Gul­la, pan­elists includ­ed Depart­ment of Health expert Chas DeBolt, Dr. Suni­ta Iyer, Dr. David Mus­nick, and Dr. Deck­er Weiss.

Gul­la wants to share with the com­mu­ni­ty the DOH expert and WANP take-homes:

• There are vari­a­tions in how peo­ple are respond­ing to test­ing. The great­est num­ber of positive.
• Poly­merase Chain Reac­tion swab tests appear on the fifth day after expo­sure. How­ev­er, some peo­ple may not have symp­toms for as many as 14 days after expo­sure, which is why a 14- day quar­an­tine is required if you think you’ve had exposure.
• Pieces of the virus are being “shed” for up to 90 days and patients may still test pos­i­tive dur­ing this time. How­ev­er, after 10 days of symp­toms, the virus cul­ture can­not be grown in a petri-dish, which is why a 10-day quar­an­tine is required once test­ing positive.
• It is impor­tant to do repeat­ed test­ing and to not feel over­ly con­fi­dent once you’ve test­ed neg­a­tive. Some schools around the coun­try are test­ing week­ly and even daily.

“I was hon­ored to par­tic­i­pate in the WANP Expert Covid-19 pan­el. It is so crit­i­cal to keep up to date on
clin­i­cal­ly rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion from prac­tic­ing providers,” said Gulla.

As islanders do their part in keep­ing the island com­mu­ni­ties safe, aware­ness of this infor­ma­tion and prac­tic­ing safe mea­sures and repeat test­ing will con­tin­ue help­ing to elim­i­nate expo­sure to oth­ers and pre­vent the spread of the virus.

 “We have offered Covid-19 test­ing since the begin­ning of the pan­dem­ic, and con­tin­ue to do so as a ser­vice to our com­mu­ni­ty,” she said. 

Liv­ing Med­ical Arts is a mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary clin­ic deliv­er­ing natur­o­path­ic med­i­cine, phys­i­cal med­i­cine and
inte­gra­tive care, serv­ing the San Juan Islands and oth­er com­mu­ni­ties for over 10 years.

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