Category Archives: Solano County Health Officer Bela Matyas

COVID-19 – Time to re-open businesses in Solano? Officials say not yet…

Re-opening business in Solano depends on state easing restrictions

Fairfield Daily Republic, By Todd R. Hansen, April 23, 2020
Deanna Deckard is owner/broker at Windermere Greystone Real Estate. (Robinson Kuntz/Daily Republic)

FAIRFIELD — The independent mayor of Las Vegas wants the casinos reopened, and more than a handful of states have already moved in that direction.

Sutter County supervisors have ordered their top administrator to send a letter to the governor calling for him to ease some of the business restrictions, and then coordinate with neighboring counties about how to do that.

Not all Solano County officials are convinced the time is right.

“What does that look like?” Supervisor Erin Hannigan asked, rhetorically. She called the concept “frightening.”

“We’re not there yet, and we are following the lead of our governor and, of course, Dr. (Bela) Matyas,” Hannigan said of the county’s public health officer. She said safety must come first.

“It could be a worse situation than it is now, so we have to be very careful about what that looks like,” the board chairwoman said.

Matyas said the county is actually ready to reopen businesses as soon as the state gives permission, and had the county had the same testing capacity it has now back when the outbreak started, the county could be looking at the number of cases on the decline.

“We have been planning for staged relaxation for a long time,” Matyas said.

There have been daily discussions about how that can be accomplished, he said.

Matyas said it would likely come in stages, with recreational opportunities being first in line, including parks and golf, followed by businesses that can more easily control social distancing. Then there would be those businesses where that distancing would be more difficult to achieve, and finally large gatherings.

“We have no plans to go slower than the state,” Matyas said.

But he cautioned such an action by the state is not likely to happen before mid-May, and even then there has to be a strategy that takes in to consideration the differences of smaller rural counties and larger, more urbanized counties.

Matyas said there are three direct points of control that must be in place: protecting hospitals from a surge of the disease; contact tracing; and protecting the most vulnerable populations, such as the fragile elderly.

He said Solano County is prepared to handle all three of those issues right now.

Vacaville Mayor Ron Rowlett

Vacaville Mayor Ron Rowlett said he does favor opening some businesses sooner than later, but agrees a strategy needs to be in place. He also said that he has had conversations with some supervisors, though he would not say whom, and the city has met with the county administration multiple times on the topic.

“We have businesses in town that are older than (50 years) that are going to lose everything,” Rowlett said.

He said the city has heard from a number of business owners who are eager to reopen their doors, and will follow whatever rules the county and city set out.

Suisun City Mayor Lori Wilson said the city is following the guidelines set out by the state and the county. She said officials have talked about what steps will need to be taken once those health orders are lifted or eased in any way. She said no specifics have been determined.

“We don’t want to be regressive in any way,” Wilson said. “We’ve done a good job flattening the curve . . . and we want to be safe.”

Fairfield Mayor Harry Price

Fairfield Mayor Harry Price said he is “ambivalent” on the topic.

He said he understands why the local business owners want to get back to business and make some money, and that is commendable. But he said the city needs to be cautious and fall on the side of health and safety.

“I don’t think we have enough evidence that we could do it on a large scale,” Price said.

He said he is buoyed by the fact residents seem to have accepted the social distancing platform, whereas just two or three weeks ago they seemed “unhappy and irritable.”

“I think that is a good sign. I think the people in Fairfield are taking it in stride, and that’s a good thing,” Price said.

That will help if and when businesses do start reopening, he said.

The Fairfield-Suisun Chamber of Commerce sent out a 14-question survey to its members that delves into a range of topics related to the novel coronavirus and the disease it causes, Covid-19. The topics include the issue of restarting the economy.

“Do you believe we are ready to start re-opening nonessential businesses?” is one of the questions.

On a broader scale, the chamber asked, “With the information you have now, when do you feel it would be best to resume normal small-group social activities?”

The results of the survey have not been made available. Chamber executive Debi Tavey could not be reached Wednesday for comment.

Deanna Deckard, owner broker of Windermere Greystoke Real Estate on Texas Street in Fairfield, said she believes the time is right to begin opening up certain kinds of businesses.

“In my opinion, for all of us to keep moving forward and for people to keep their heads above water, I think we have to ease some of those business restrictions,” Deckard said.

She understands not all businesses could be part of that, but she feels there are some that can control their clientele numbers and other Covid-19 socialization concerns.

Deckard said things are OK for real estate businesses now that the industry is considered an essential business. It took some lobbying to take if off the nonessential list, but it is an industry that has been using technology for a long time and physical contact with clients is no longer a necessity.

“Things are going OK in the real estate world; we’re marching right along,” the 17-year realty veteran said.

While the numbers for April are not in, yet, she noted that sales in March totaled 339, which is only slightly lower than the 365 that closed in March 2019. She said interest rates are driving the market.

“The interest rates are just too good,” Deckard said.

The bigger issue, she said, has been the lack of inventory, which has been an issue for several years. Listings for April are particularly low.

Deckard said most of the activity has been with first-time buyers and those buyers who are looking to move up in the market. The mix of Solano County residents or those coming into the county to take advantage of lower prices remains about the same as it has been.

“I’m optimistic for Solano County, for us,” Deckard said. “Our pricing is such that we are more affordable than other places in the Bay Area.”

She said house prices have fallen a bit, but it is still a good market for sellers and buyers.

Most people who have the novel coronavirus experience only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. Some people, especially older adults and those with underlying health problems, experience more severe illness such as pneumonia and at times, death.

Three people have died thus far in Solano County as a result of Covid-19. The vast majority of people recover. The World Health Organization reports people with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three to six weeks to recover.

Coronavirus – Solano County Health Officer will not require masks, waiting on State order

Coronavirus: Masks remain a recommendation in Solano County, not a requirement

The Reporter, by Nick Sestanovich, April 23, 2020

As the global coronavirus pandemic continues to show no signs of slowing down, five Bay Area counties and at least three cities have made it a requirement for residents to wear face coverings when going outside to help stop the spread.

This tally does not include Solano County just yet.

Dr. Bela Matyas, the county’s public health officer, said Solano may consider it down the line if the resources are available but there were a number of things preventing it being a requirement for the time being. The first, he said, was a lack of evidence that wearing masks reduces the transmission of the virus.

“From a public health standpoint, I don’t feel like there’s any reason to implement it, based on the absence of evidence that it provides usefulness,” he said.

The other drawback, Matyas said, was an issue of timing, noting that mandating wearing face coverings would be “making things stricter” at a time when jurisdictions have discussed relaxing their stay-at-home orders.

“It feels a little bit ironic to be, on the one hand, talking about relaxing the order and, on the other hand, implementing something that makes the order stricter,” he said.

Matyas also said that even with the recent orders, there has not been a consensus among Bay Area public health officers about requiring masks. Santa Clara County, for example, has opted not to issue a requirement, despite being the location of the first known coronavirus-related death in the U.S.

Finally, Matyas said that if Solano were to require face coverings, it would be obliged to provide them to residents who are unable to afford or obtain them.

“We can’t, in good conscience, be asking people to do something that they can’t do and then enforce on it,” he said.

However, Matyas said that if Solano were given the resources to provide masks to ensure everyone has one, it would consider a requirement.

“We’re not dogmatically opposed to it by any means, but there’s issues of timing and issues of being able to require something and then making it possible for people to be able to implement that requirement,” he said.

Matyas said the county is also waiting to see if the state requires it.

“This issue has been brought up to the state,” he said. “We’re waiting to see what their response is.”

“The expectation is that we can get something from the state that would be broader in its applicability,” he added.

On April 3, Solano Public Health issued its first notice recommending that residents wear masks when going out in public while still adhering to social distancing guidelines. The notice was not a strict requirement and suggested that the masks be fabric or homemade and not be medical grade.

On April 17, health officials in the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo and Sonoma mandated that people wear face coverings when going outdoors, which went into effect Tuesday. Similar ordinances were also issued in Fremont, Pleasant Hill and San Francisco.

The ordinances tend to vary by jurisdiction, but they do not require masks or face coverings to be worn by children ages 12 and under and children ages 2 and under are prohibited from wearing masks because of suffocation issues. The orders also do not apply to people traveling alone or with family members in their cars or while exercising and are mainly intended for people standing in line at businesses, using public transit or going to a hospital.

Enforcements vary by jurisdiction, but many of the ordinances classify violations as misdemeanors punishable by fine or imprisonment.

Supervisor Skip Thomson said he felt requiring residents to wear masks was “a wonderful idea” but felt that there may not be enough masks available for everyone, particularly homeless individuals, to wear.

“It should be seriously considered, but until we’re able to give out masks to everyone, it just doesn’t work,” he said.

As of Wednesday, there have been 186 confirmed cases since the start of the outbreak — including 21 cases that remain active — as well as 48 hospitalizations and three deaths. The data by city includes 76 confirmed cases in Vallejo, 47 in Fairfield, 26 in Vacaville, 12 in Benicia and 11 in Suisun City. Dixon, Rio Vista and the unincorporated areas of Solano have all had confirmed cases of 10 or fewer, a sample size too small for the county to fully report.

Thomson acknowledged that a lot of residents are awaiting a return to normalcy but felt full testing and tracing needed to be done to paint a clearer picture of the data.

“There’s a lot of work yet to be done before we can reopen this economy,” he said. “As all the experts are saying, if we open it prematurely, we’re gonna have a resurgence of the virus infections. There’s certainly a balancing act between opening up the economy but not opening it up too soon to where we have another spike in cases.”

Vallejo Mayor Bob Sampayan said the city is following the direction of the Solano County Health Department, and the state of California when it comes to requiring residents to wear masks.

“I strongly recommend residents wear some sort of mask when they go out into public,” Sampayan said.

Sampayan said he has spoken to Matyas about issuing an order requiring masks.

“His position has been that because Solano County is sparsely populated, and not densely populated like other local counties, he doesn’t believe masks should be mandatory here.”

Sampayan said that when he goes out, he sees people not observing the six-feet social distancing requirement and not wearing masks.

“I wish we all would be more concerned about our safety,” he added.

Matyas said masks and face coverings are recommended in Solano in situations where maintaining a distance of 6 feet from others outside their home is impossible. The county recommends the coverings be made from materials such as fabric, scarves, bandanas or towels and worn in a manner that covers the nose and mouth. The coverings are encouraged to be washed frequently, ideally after each use.

For more information, including a video on how to make your own face coverings, go to admin.solanocounty.com:4433/depts/ph/coronavirus_links/faq___face_coverings.asp.

John Glidden contributed to this report.

Coronavirus – Contact tracing efforts in Solano County back in February

[Editor: the link in the first paragraph to “the patient in her 40s” is a fascinating account by 10 UC Davis physicians, covering Solano County’s first-in-the-nation community transmitted case of COVID-19.  The narrative covers everything from initial intake to the patient’s stable condition and discharge, along with x-rays and treatment timeline.  – R.S.]

Coronavirus detectives: Here’s how counties try to track everyone exposed

CalMatters, by Rachel Becker, April 23, 2020
California needs thousands of contact tracers. But counties and cities are overwhelmed and understaffed. “Woefully inadequate,” said one public health director.

By the time public health officer Bela Matyas learned that the novel coronavirus was spreading in Solano County, the patient in her 40s was already on a ventilator.

Back in February, the woman was the first in the nation known to be infected without traveling or being around someone who was sick. But she was too ill to answer questions about where she’d been and whom she had talked to, worked with and touched.

Dozens of public health investigators from local, state and federal agencies fanned out like detectives, questioning the family members who had visited her and the hospitals that had orchestrated her care — even staking out the store where she worked. Their mission: to piece together a list of people who could have been exposed to the virus.

In the end, the list totaled more than 300 people spanning six California counties, Matyas estimated. Four — including three healthcare workers — tested positive, each prompting their own investigation.

This process, called contact tracing, is a critical element in containing the spread of the novel coronavirus. But the ability of California’s 61 county and city public health departments varies greatly as they struggle to keep pace with rising numbers of patients.

“What we had to do was clear from the beginning,” Matyas said. “But actually being able to do it was very hard.”

Some local health departments, like Madera County’s, have managed to trace the contacts of every person who tests positive for the coronavirus. Others, like the city of Long Beach and Placer County, are so overburdened that they are only trying to trace contacts that could put vulnerable people at risk, such as healthcare workers or people in nursing homes.

To handle the pandemic, the nation will need 30 contact tracers for every 100,000 Americans, according to the National Association of County and City Health Officials. But no California city or county has anywhere near that many. Under that formula, for example, Long Beach would need 140 investigators, seven to nine times more than it has now.

North of Sacramento, Placer County, with a population of almost 400,000, would need 120 tracers.

“It certainly illustrates the point that 18 — which is our expanded capacity, which is more than our baseline of six — is woefully inadequate,” said Aimee Sisson, Placer County’s public health director.

Contact tracing will become even more important as the state starts reopening parts of its economy. The concern is that more human interaction could cause flare-ups, especially since people can spread the virus before feeling ill and limited testing leaves people unaware they’re infectious.

“We need to make sure that there is capacity in every county to do adequate contact tracing. That’s part of containing the disease,” said Kat DeBurgh, executive director of the Health Officers Association of California. “Are we ready today? No. When will we be ready? I don’t know.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom addressed the concern about inadequate contact tracing on Wednesday, announcing plans to train 10,000 people to help local health departments. “The good news is we believe we have the capacity to build an army of tracers,” Newsom said, although he did not say when they’d be ready to deploy.


Jeffrey Martin, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, said that fighting an epidemic is like fighting a wildfire: The state can’t afford to mess up containment.

“[It’s] important to track all of those people down to extinguish all the embers in that brushfire,” Martin said. “If we don’t do it right, and if the brush fires are not extinguished, you’d have to be a magical, wishful thinker, to think that there would not be a raging wildfire.”

Some counties keep up, others can’t

The San Joaquin Valley county of Madera typically has two to three people keeping tabs on tuberculosis and sexually transmitted infections in its population of roughly 157,000 people.

Then, the coronavirus hit — and the initial cluster encompassed about 200 patients and potential contacts, said Madera County public health director Sara BosseThirty-six people have tested positive.

Still, by teaming with the sheriff’s department and probation investigators, the county has managed to keep up contact tracing, isolation and quarantine for everyone potentially exposed.

Madera is unusual in that investigators, typically in plain clothes, visit patients and their contacts in person — sort of. They drop off packets of information as well as a letter excusing work absences to employers. Then they get back into their cars, and answer questions face-to-face through the window, over the phone.

“Then they can explain to them what’s going on,” Bosse said. “We understand that people are experiencing a lot of anxiety and it’s difficult for people to hear this news that they might have been exposed.”

For now, the spread of the virus seems to be slowing. “We’re really hopeful that it’s at least in part due to the active contact tracing that we’ve implemented,” Bosse said.

The spread of the novel coronavirus in Madera County appears to be slowing, according to county data.

In Riverside County, cases are coming in faster than the county’s 30-plus person team can investigate them, according to Barbara Cole, branch chief of disease control for the county’s public health department. The county has 3,084 confirmed cases.

It can take multiple phone calls to build enough trust to reconstruct someone’s string of contacts, Cole said.

“It’s about trying to establish a rapport, stressing how we’re going to protect their confidentiality,” she said. “The majority of people, they’re concerned about their friends and their family.”

In the Northern California county of Solano, Matyas quickly realized that tracing and quarantining all contacts would be impossible for every case. To date, 186 people have tested positive in the county.

Instead, the county focuses on tracking the risk to vulnerable populations, including people who are older, have underlying medical conditions, or live without shelter.

Solano County’s communicable disease team, which has shrunk to its original staff of six, first interviews anyone who tests positive about where they work and who they came in contact with. That in some cases is a long list: people who visit their homes, coworkers who sit close or share food.

Then a member of the team calls all of the contacts. The idea is to identify and isolate people who are feeling ill or whose jobs put them at risk of infecting others in nursing homes, hospitals, or homeless shelters.

“We no longer pretend that we can do any kind of active quarantine,” Matyas said. “There’s no bandwidth to check on them to see if they’re doing it.”

Workers are conducting patient interviews and case followup at the Long Beach health department’s operations center. Photo by epidemiologist Nora Barin.

Long Beach and Sacramento and Placer counties also are only tracing the virus’s spread through vulnerable populations.

“Instead of asking every place you went to, every person you came into contact with, we say, ‘Have you been in contact with vulnerable populations?’” said Sisson in Placer County. “We just have too many cases for that full interview.” In the county, which is home to the first person to die of the novel coronavirus in California133 people have tested positive.

In Long Beach, every case initially was tracked. But then people kept getting sick, and most of the deaths are in long-term care facilities

As people sheltered in place, contact tracing didn’t have to be as extensive. “Now we’re to the point where we have more than 400 cases, and we’re really focusing on our healthcare worker cases, and our cases in our long-term care facilities,” said Emily Holman, communicable disease controller for the city’s health department.

Tracing contacts of people in long-term care facilities is different than in the community at large. Instead of focusing on reconstructing a web of contacts, the aim is to rapidly identify and separate infected and potentially exposed people from healthy people. Speed is key, so if someone’s symptomatic, they’re treated as a case even with no test results.

“Every minute in those facilities can be crucial and could prevent an exposure,” Holman said.

Staffing up

Former CDC Director Tom Frieden called for an army of more than 300,000 contact tracers in an interview with STAT. And current CDC head Robert Redfield announced plans to hire 650 more public health personnel, including to help with contact tracing, the Washington Post reported.

Local health departments have been bolstering their workforces on their own. San Francisco plans to recruit and train as many as 150 people to conduct contact tracing, including librarians, city attorney staff and medical students.

The Bay Area’s Alameda County also has ramped up from just seven staff investigating cases of communicable disease to 60 people assigned to the novel coronavirus — including 18 who follow up with contacts. As the epidemic progresses, “we anticipate deploying as many as 300 staff for contact tracing,” said Nicholas Moss, acting director of Alameda County’s Public Health Department.

Sacramento County is working to expand its six-person team to 30 by recruiting from other departments and training medical students to work with people who are homeless.

“We’re hoping that based on the modeling that’s occurring, that we will be ready — and actually, we’re hoping that there won’t be another wave,” said Public Health Officer Olivia Kasirye.

Is there an app for that?

Some counties are looking to technological help. San Francisco, for instance, is training its contact tracers to use a platform that Grant Colfax, director of public health, called “an integral part of our efforts going forward.”

The platform, developed by a software company called Dimagi, is not an app that people can download to their phones. Instead, it’s a web portal that public health workers can use to keep tabs on people with infections, list their contacts and keep in touch.

Apple and Google also have proposed tracking people’s proximities using Bluetooth. Newsom has said the state is vetting various technologies.

But Alameda County’s Moss is cautious about protecting the privacy of residents. 

“We want to make sure that any technological tool we employ where people’s health information is going to be input, that there are adequate safeguards for privacy,” Moss said. Plus, the app has to be easy to use, and it has to cough back up the data needed to keep tabs on the virus’s spread.

Eric Sergienko, Mariposa County’s health officer, worries that if each local health department ends up using different software, it might be hard to trace contacts that cross county lines.

That’s where Sergienko hopes the state steps in and standardizes the platform California’s counties use. “What can the state do for us? Just by finding the best one,” he said.

State Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly said that California will need 10,000 more contact tracers as it modifies its stay at home order. Between 2,000 and 3,000 people could test positive per day. And each of them could have ten contacts, he said.

California might not have needed to push quite so hard to ramp up during the crisis if it had funded enough public health workers to begin with. “We’ve been seeking increased funding for years,” said Kat DeBurgh, executive director of the Health Officers Association of California.

More trained health workers could be important in fending off the next pandemic.

“By having these trained contact tracing public health workers, we can actually prevent infections, prevent the severe disease from happening in the first place,” said Lee Riley, a professor of epidemiology and infectious diseases at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Public Health.

“But right now, everything that we’ve been doing is just reactive to what’s already happened.”

Coronavirus: Solano doc says curve flattening, more work to be done

Board of Supervisors to return to the table to talk state funding usage

Vallejo Times-Herald, by Kim Fu, April 7, 2020

Positive coronavirus figures in Solano County are expected to rise but there’s no cause for alarm, as the numbers merely reflect an increase in testing.

Dr. Bela Matyas, Solano County Health

So explained Dr. Bela Matyas with Solano Public Health Tuesday as he addressed the county’s Board of Supervisors.

In his update, Matyas talked about recently-released data that shows a breakdown of coronavirus cases by city. Those with 10 or more show exact figures, those with less do not. As of Tuesday, two related deaths have been reported.

“The coronavirus continues to spread but the impact on our hospitals have so far been substantial but not overwhelming,” he advised, adding that there are “lots of ICU beds, lots of ventilators.”

The stay at home order issued in March appears to be working, he continued, but more must be done.

“We have to stay the course if we want this approach to work. We have to do this for as long as necessary,” he said. “The most critical of all this is protecting the most vulnerable.”

The latter has been defined as the elderly and those with pre-existing medical conditions.

Matyas guesstimated the virus peaking around late April to mid May.

Though the worst is expected to be over at that time, risks will remain and the virus will still exist.

“It may be substantially longer before we can consider us through the outbreak and see it behind us,” he clarified.

Drive-through coronavirus testing is expected to begin today at the Solano County Fairgrounds in Vallejo. First responders and healthcare workers only will be eligible for the test. Any remaining kits will be made available at a later date to other essential workers.

In other matters, an emergency grant from the state slated to go towards aiding homeless clients regarding COVID-19 prevention and containment efforts caused tension amongst the board.

At issue was the COVID-19 Emergency Homeless grant award agreement, which offered $206,370 from the California Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council.

The board needed to approve receipt of the funding, which would then “be provided as a non-county contribution to Community Action Partnership (CAP) Solano Joint Powers Authority,” slated to coordinate emergency COVID-19 efforts (a 4/5 vote required). The board’s approval would also authorize the county administrator to execute the agreement and subsequent agreements/amendments with the grantor to facilitate acceptance of the award.

Supervisor Skip Thomson adamantly refused to support the funding being placed in the hands of CAP Solano.

“I don’t think they’ve done a good job, to be honest,” he said, adding that the money could be better spent on four portable wash/restroom stations at a cost of about $50,000 each.

It would address hygiene issues, he said, pointing out that, with restroom facilities at fast food eateries, coffee shops, parks and more now closed, homeless residents have made bushes their new lavatories. That, he said, will soon become a public health crisis.

The mobile units could be deployed to Vallejo, Fairfield, Vacaville and other locales on a rotating basis, Thomson said, and also be used in conjunction with the Office of Emergency Services in the case of a natural disaster or other emergency.

Supervisor Jim Spering said he needed more information before supporting the mobile stations, but agreed with Thomson regarding CAP Solano. What assurances are there that the money will be spent where it’s supposed to be, he asked.

Chairwoman Erin Hannigan said a delayed decision regarding the funding could hurt the homeless now, as help is needed now.

Following much discussion, a motion to go forward with Thomson’s mobile wash station failed 2-3, with Hannigan, Spering and John Vasques dissenting.

The original motion also failed, 1-4, with Monica Brown, Spering, Vasquez and Thomson all dissenting.

A third and final motion to, among other things, accept the agreement regarding the funding, have staff return with more information regarding the mobile wash stations and hold an emergency board meeting Tuesday passed unanimously.