A recent increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations has landed Solano County on the state of California’s list for “targeted engagement,” to slow further spread of the coronavirus, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Monday.
While cases of the coronavirus and hospitalizations are on the rise throughout California, the state is zeroing in on counties experiencing the most acute spikes.
“Being on the county monitoring list brings with it additional attention and focus, additional assistance, some additional resources at the state level,” said Mark Ghaly, secretary of California’s Health and Human Services Agency.
Ghaly hopes the designation “really galvanizes the response at the county level in order to … make sure that spread does not increase so rapidly.”
Nineteen counties have been placed under increased monitoring by the state, covering nearly three quarters of California’s population. On Monday, Glenn, Merced and Orange counties were added along with Solano.
In Solano County, hospitals have seen a 23% increase in their three-day average of COVID-19 patients. The spike has been attributed in part to a jump in infections among dozens of North Bay farmworkers, many of whom work in Napa and Sonoma, but reside in Solano County.
State and county health officials have identified a list of steps to improve virus mitigation, including working with vineyard management companies to implement physical distancing measures and enlisting Spanish interpreters to educate workers on public health guidelines.
First below is an excerpt from the CA Dept. of Public Health’s Watch List, detailing recent increasing hospitalizations in Solano County and “key action steps” that Solano is taking in coordination with the State.
Below that is a detail from the State’s County Data Chart, showing Solano County among those counties with increasing hospitalization rate of >10%. On June 29, Solano shows a 23% increase in 3-day avg COVID+ hospitalized patients.
Solano County (has variance) is increasing hospitalization. Drivers include a large outbreak among farm workers in the vineyards in Sonoma and Napa who are residing in Solano, as well as an ongoing surge in cases related to family gatherings and other social gatherings on the weekends. The farm worker cases total many dozens over the past one to two weeks, and the close-contact cases appear to have begun with weekend activities in early May and are continuing to the present. The large number of such cases overall is resulting in an increase in hospitalized cases. These cases are not at present resulting in a strain on the hospitals or in ICU admissions but the county is monitoring this closely. County reports that hospitals in their jurisdiction have multiple levels of surge capacity for hospitalizations and for ICU admissions, if these become necessary. Key action steps include: working with the neighboring counties and with the vineyard management companies to implement social distancing measures; 2) educating the workers themselves (using Spanish interpreters) on social distancing measures; 3) providing appropriate cautionary messages through social media and the press about the risks of gatherings, not social distancing and not using personal protection measures.
Holiday blues: 19 counties now on watch list for more COVID-19 restrictions
CalMatters, by Lauren Hepler, June 29, 2020
Frederique Van Niekerk, from left, and her mother Bernadette Van Niekerk wear masks while waiting in line to enter the clothing store Forever 21 while shopping in Walnut Creek on June 18, 2020. Photo by Jose Carlos Fajardo, Bay Area News Group
With the July 4 holiday weekend only days away, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Monday that 19 counties home to 72% of the state’s population are now on a “watch list” for additional COVID-19 restrictions.
Four new counties — Solano, Merced, Glenn and Orange — were added Monday to the list of hard-hit locales where state health officials are monitoring infection data, providing technical assistance and weighing new measures to slow the spread of the virus.
Bars were already ordered to shut down in Los Angeles and six other counties on Sunday as businesses hit hard by the virus looked to the busy summer holiday to recoup some losses. Even after the closures, local health officials warned on Monday of “alarming” increases in the number of new COVID-19 cases in L.A., and County Supervisor Janice Hahn announced on Twitter that officials plan to close beaches for the holiday from July 3-6.
The question now is if and when the governor may ask other counties on the list to “toggle back” reopening plans, though exactly what that might entail remains unclear.
“We are considering a number of other things to advance,” Newsom said, “and we will be making those public as conditions change.”
In the most severe case in Imperial County, Newsom said the state is prepared to intervene should county supervisors refuse to revert to a strict stay-at-home order. As of late last week, the county had the state’s highest COVID-19 hospitalization rate.
“The state of California will assert itself and make sure that happens,” Newsom said. “We believe they need to move back into that stay-at-home posture.”
The growing watch list and the governor’s repeated emphasis on the importance of a “dimmer switch” to scale back reopening plans if necessary highlights ongoing tension over state and local control that has already boiled over in some parts of the state. In Orange County, health officer Nichole Quick was one of at least five such officials in California to retire or resign this spring, in her case amid threats and personal information leaks.
Besides Los Angeles, the other counties already ordered to shut down bars were Fresno, Imperial, Kern, Kings, San Joaquin and Tulare. Those on the watch list that have not yet been ordered to take additional precautions are Contra Costa, Riverside, Sacramento, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Stanislaus and Ventura.
On Monday, Newsom and California Health & Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly stressed that the state is basing decisions about where to intervene on specific health data. Of particular concern are local “positivity rates,” or the percentage of COVID-19 tests coming back positive. That number climbed to 5.9% statewide in the last week, Newsom said, compared to 4.4% in early June when the state began to allow gradual reopenings.
Statewide testing capacity has increased in the meantime, he said, to a record of nearly 106,000 tests on Sunday. But in areas like Imperial County, where the positivity rate hit 23%, the increased caseload can lead to frantic conditions on the ground.
“We had to move 500 patients out of their hospital system into surrounding county systems,” Newsom said of “extraordinary rates” in the 190,000-person county along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The scramble in Imperial County highlights the uneven fallout from the virus. Hospitalization rates are climbing fastest in rural Imperial, Kings and Stanislaus counties. Some more affluent and urbanized regions, including San Francisco and Marin counties where infection and hospitalization rates have so far remained lower, have delayed components of reopening plans.
When it comes to the economic toll of the virus, California has already shed twice as many jobs during the first two months of the COVID-19 crisis — about 2.6 million — as it did during 31 months of the Great Recession a decade ago, according to an analysis released last week by the California Budget & Policy Center. Job losses are most concentrated in low-paying service fields, and Black women, Latina women and Asian men saw the sharpest employment declines from February to May this year, by 23%, 22% and 18%, respectively, the report found.
This week’s bar closures are likely to add pressure to existing questions about whether state or federal lawmakers will extend enhanced unemployment benefits, small business loans or other safety-net programs strained by the pandemic. It’s a dynamic that has already upended the state’s annual budget cycle, with legislators so far favoring cuts likely to most impact a dwindling number of middle-class families to address a sudden $54 billion deficit.
“The question for state policymakers as the COVID-19 recession drags on is, how will they find the money needed to avoid cuts to programs and services that Californians will continue to need in the months and years to come?” Alissa Anderson, senior policy analyst with the California Budget & Policy Center, wrote in the recent report.
Millennial, Gen Z workers often on the front lines of retail, restaurants
OAKLAND, CA – JUNE 27: Katherine Brady, 25, of San Francisco, has lunch with Cinque Curry, 25, of Oakland, at Jack London Square in Oakland, Calif., on Saturday, June 27, 2020. Brady and Curry talked about the changes they made to their daily routine because of the coronavirus pandemic. Curry changed his behavior after members of his family were infected by COVID-19. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)Mercury-News, by Nico Savidge and Leonardo Castañeda, June 28, 2020
A surge of coronavirus cases among young people is leading to a generational blame game as California and other states grapple with a second wave of the virus.
Reports of outbreaks across the country tied to fraternity houses and college-town bars have helped fuel a perception that people in their teens and 20s — who are far less likely to die from COVID-19 but can still suffer debilitating bouts of the virus or pass it along to others who are more vulnerable — have thrown caution to the wind because they don’t feel threatened by it.
A long list of other factors may also be at play in the increase, however.
“I see plenty of irresponsibility going on across the age spectrum as we have opened up,” said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, chair of the University of California San Francisco’s Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. “I don’t think it’s helpful to demonize one group or another.”
An analysis released last week found 44 percent of new coronavirus cases in California were among people 34 or younger, compared to 29 percent a month ago. Meanwhile, the analysis of California Department of Public Health data, conducted by infectious disease epidemiologist George Lemp, found the share of cases from people over 50 was dropping.
At a press conference Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state is seeing an alarming increase in coronavirus cases among people under 35, which he called “that age cohort that believes in many cases that they are invincible, and they are somehow immune from the impacts of COVID-19.”
But the increase tracks with what Bibbins-Domingo said she expected as more businesses reopened.
During that process, she noted that government and public health officials told people at higher risk from coronavirus — particularly those who are older — that they should still stay at home to avoid infection. Younger people at lower risk, meanwhile, were given the OK to go out again, making it more likely they would catch the virus.
“The age doesn’t concern me as much as the big rise in cases,” Bibbins-Domingo said.
Another possible explanation for the rise among young people: It’s a lot easier to get a COVID-19 test these days, which has meant people with milder or even asymptomatic cases, who skew younger, are finding out they have the virus, Bibbins-Domingo said.
And the jobs young people do could be playing a role as well. Nationwide, only about one-third of workers are in the 16 to 34 age group, but those in essential, public-facing jobs — as well as industries that have started reopening more broadly in recent weeks — tend to be younger.
In retail, where officials have been easing lockdown restrictions, about 56 percent of workers at clothing stores are 34 and younger, as are 70 percent of workers at shoe stores and 60 percent of those at electronics stores.
Nearly two-thirds of restaurant workers are 34 or younger, as are nearly half of grocery store employees, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Workers in food service “are so exposed,” said Sameer Shah, the 36-year-old co-owner of Voyager Coffee, who noted the business model of a coffee shop relies on serving perhaps hundreds of customers each day — all of whom could pose a risk in the coronavirus age. Nearly every worker at Voyager’s three cafes is under 35.
To lessen risk, Voyager workers serve customers at doorway counters, and don’t let people inside their cafes. Shah said it seems like irresponsible behavior from customers is becoming more common as the pandemic has dragged on — but he didn’t chalk it up to any particular age group.
“People are just not quite as on guard as they were before,” Shah said.
Still, there is some evidence that young people are more likely to take risks during the pandemic: While most people across all age groups report they are consistently wearing masks, avoiding groups and staying at least six feet away from others, people from 18 to 24 were much less likely than older adults to say they were doing so, a May CDC survey found.
Then again, millennials from 25 to 34 tend to be more cautious — they trailed only people 65 and older in their likelihood to report they were avoiding groups and wearing masks. (People from 45 to 54, the age range 52-year-old Newsom falls into, reported the second-lowest levels of compliance with those guidelines.)
Cinqué Curry, a 25-year-old construction worker from Oakland, admitted he didn’t take coronavirus very seriously at first — he went on a cruise in February, and traveled to Las Vegas in March, just as casinos started shutting down.
But then, Curry said, “I started to really think about my grandmother,” who was terrified of the virus. Seven of his family members across the country fell ill with COVID-19. All have since recovered.
Now, Curry said, he wears a mask, doesn’t venture out much and takes other precautions. On Saturday, he was enjoying some takeout tacos on a bench in Jack London Square with plenty of distance from other groups; unlike some peers, Curry isn’t jumping at the chance to start dining in restaurants or drinking in bars again.
“I feel like I’ve taken it as seriously as I can,” he said.
A recent increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations has landed Solano County on the state of California’s list for “targeted engagement,” to slow further spread of the coronavirus, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Monday.
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