FAIRFIELD — Solano County Superior Courts is seeking an emergency order from the chief justice of the state Supreme Court to allow certain operations and court matters to be delayed due to Covid-19.
The actions would be in place through April 3, a statement released by the court said. The court remains open, but is looking for permission to continue the following matters:
• Civil, family and probate trials.
• Small claims matters.
• Unlawful detainer matters.
• Traffic matters except for trials already scheduled.
• Guardianship and conservatorship matters, with the exception of emergency orders.
• Most family law matters.
• Most criminal trials.
All clerk’s offices are closed to the public. All transactions with the clerk’s offices will be handled via drop box, telephone or through email.
These continuances are intended to reduce the number of jurors, parties and attorneys in the court, consistent with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order dated March 12, the Solano County courts report.
Allowing the city’s cannabis businesses to offer curbside pick-up of medical marijuana is one of three orders issued Wednesday by Vallejo City Manager Greg Nyhoff, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nyhoff’s orders also included keeping essential businesses open to the public, while limiting residential and business evictions in the city.
The orders come just two days after the Vallejo City Council approved a proclamation declaring a local state of emergency as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. The move also gives Nyhoff emergency powers as Vallejo’s director of emergency services.
“These three orders really help to keep the city safe,” Vallejo Mayor Bob Sampayan said by phone on Wednesday. “They also keep the city up and running.”
The city’s 11 cannabis storefront businesses are now allowed to “conduct curbside pick-up of medical cannabis goods under video surveillance or under monitor of the retailer’s security personnel,” the order states. Retailers are still required to check a customer’s age under state law.
Nyhoff stated that such businesses are essential health care operations. His second order listed almost every type of business as essential, including grocery stores, certified farmers’ markets, food banks, convenience stores, and other establishments engaged in the retail sale of canned food, dry goods, fresh fruits, businesses that provide food, shelter, and social services, and other necessities of life for economically disadvantaged or otherwise needy individuals.
Also listed as essential were newspapers, and other media services, gas stations and auto-supply, auto-repair, and related facilities, banks and related financial institutions, hardware stores, plumbers, electricians, exterminators, and other service providers who provide services that are necessary to maintaining the safety, sanitation, and essential operation of residences.
The order further identifies businesses providing mailing and shipping services, including post office boxes, educational institutions, laundromats, dry cleaners, and laundry service providers, restaurants and other facilities that prepare and serve food, airlines, taxis, and other private transportation providers providing transportation services necessary for essential activities and other purposes expressly authorized in Nyhoff’s order.
The order stipulates that Nyhoff is “to assist continuing services of an Essential Business and to support its operations to maintain financial feasibility, that any Essential Business is able to provide delivery services of its products to all residents of the City of Vallejo.”
Finally, Nyhoff declared that all residential and business evictions based on a tenant’s loss of income or need to pay out-of-pocket medical expenses due to COVID-19 are prohibited.
All three orders stay until the council rescinds the emergency proclamation they approved on Monday.
Washington Post, By Ariana Eunjung Cha, March 19, 2020 5:55am PDT
The deadly coronavirus has been met with a bit of a shrug among some in the under-50 set in the United States. Even as public health officials repeatedly urged social distancing, the young and hip spilled out of bars on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. They gleefully hopped on flights, tweeting about the rock-bottom airfares. And they gathered in packs on beaches.
Their attitudes were based in part on early data from China, which suggested that covid-19 might seriously sicken or kill the elderly — but spare the young.
Stark new data from the United States and Europe suggests otherwise.
Earlier this week, French health ministry official Jérome Salomon said half of the 300 to 400 coronavirus patients treated in intensive care units in Paris were younger than 65, and, according to numbers presented at a seminar of intensive care specialists, half the ICU patients in the Netherlands were younger than 50.
At a White House news conference on Wednesday, Deborah Birx, the response coordinator of the nation’s coronavirus task force, warned about the concerning reports from France — and Italy, too — about “young people getting seriously ill and very seriously ill in the ICUs.”
She called out younger generations in particular, for not taking the virus seriously, and warned of “disproportional number of infections among that group.”
President Trump reinforced her warning, saying: “We don’t want them gathering, and I see they do gather, including on beaches and in restaurants, young people. They don’t realize, and they’re feeling invincible.”
The CDC report looked at 4,226 covid-19 cases, with much of the data coming from the outbreaks among older adults in assisted living facilities. As in China, the highest percentage of severe outcomes were among the elderly. About 80 percent of people who died were older than 65.
A group of young women walk past New Orleans police officers on Bourbon Street after midnight when the police department enforced a statewide shutdown of bars and restaurants ordered by Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards on Mar. 16. (Max Becherer/The Advocate via AP) (Staff Photo By Max Becherer/AP)
However, the percentage with more moderate or severe disease requiring hospitalization is more evenly distributed between the old and the young, with 53 percent of those in ICUs and 45 percent of those hospitalized age 65 and older.
“These preliminary data also demonstrate that severe illness leading to hospitalization, including ICU admission and death, can occur in adults of any age with COVID-19,” researchers wrote.
Severe outcomes among patients with covid-19.
There was more encouraging news about children in the United States. Those age 19 and younger who were tested appear to have milder illness with almost no hospitalizations. A much larger sample of children in China, as detailed in the journal Pediatrics this week, found that most children had mild to moderate illness.
The CDC report did not specify whether the younger patients had underlying conditions that might make them more vulnerable, but Anthony S. Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, commented on CNN on Wednesday night that some did.
One younger adult, a University of Utah genetics researcher, Clement Chow, has been tweeting about his experiences. “Important point: we really don’t know much about his virus. I’m young and not high risk, yet I am in the ICU with a very severe case,” he wrote. He said he was facing respiratory failure and put on oxygen.
Public health experts say it’s difficult to compare coronavirus numbers by age across countries at this stage due to the limited numbers tested and that differences may be due to the environment, lifestyle, demographics or something about the virus itself.
There may be a high percentages of young smokers in some areas of France, for example. Or “the high proportion of critically ill young people in the Netherlands may reflect the relatively younger population,” the Dutch news service NRC, surmised.
Maybe some young people who were tested happen to be in cities or industrial areas with a lot of pollution that might impact their susceptibility to serious respiratory illness. Or the bar for admission to the hospital and the quality of treatments may vary enough by country that it impacts the course of the illness.
Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, the director of Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, said the numbers are difficult to interpret because there are so few people who have been tested. He said some populations may be overrepresented due to public health officials focusing on testing of clusters of people who live together and may be of similar ages.
However, Garcia-Sastre said, the numbers show it’s clear “everybody has risk. Even in young people there is a percentage that has serious infection.”
Just before 5:30pm on Wednesday, March 18, Solano County issued a countywide Shelter at Home Health Order and Directive. The order begins with a lengthy title that goes into some detail and follows with a warning that “Violation of or failure to comply with this Order is a misdemeanor punishable by fine, imprisonment, or both.”
Order of the Solano County Health Officer directing individuals to shelter at home except that they may leave to provide or receive certain essential services or engage in certain essential activities and work for essential businesses and essential governmental services; exempting individuals experiencing homelessness from this order but urging them to find shelter and government agencies to provide it; directing all businesses and governmental agencies to cease non-essential operations at physical locations in the county; prohibiting all non-essential gatherings of any number of individuals; and prohibiting all non-essential travel
Please read this Order carefully. Violation of or failure to comply with this Order is a misdemeanor punishable by fine, imprisonment, or both. (California Health and Safety Code § 120295, et seq.)
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