Category Archives: Solano County CA

Contra Costa County, Contra Costa Health Services - Hazardous Materials Programs, Coronavirus, Covid 19, Solano County CA

Contra Costa County reporting coronavirus cases by city – Solano County has yet to do so

By Roger Straw, April 5 2020
[UPDATE: On Monday April 6, Solano County released new information showing cases by cities, but detailing only the three largest cities in Solano.  Smaller cities like Benicia are still in the dark.  See COVID-19 in Solano County – 15 new cases over the weekend, curve continues up, partial city listings, fewer tests.  – R.S.]

On Sunday, April 5, the Antioch Herald published information clearly showing a city-by-city listing of positive COVID-19 cases in Contra Costa County.

Contra Costa Health Services: Data reported to CCHS as of 4/5/2020 at 11:30 a.m. Data is manually compiled from CalREDIE and hospitalization data is collected via phone survey. All data points could be a snapshot at different times. We are continually working on improving the data collection.

This information comes from the Contra Costa Health Department’s coronavirus Dashboard – see coronavirus.cchealth.org/dashboard.  The listing also notes City population and Cases per 100,000.  (Note that the Dashboard was slow to barely functional at the time of this writing.  I’m guessing this is due to high traffic volume.)

SOLANO COUNTY REFUSAL

Solano County officials have been approached on multiple occasions with requests for more detailed information as to the whereabouts of cases in our county.  On advice of County Council Bernadette Curry, the Solano Health Department has refused to release a city-based listing.  Curry claims that releasing city specific data would violate the County’s obligations under HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act that was passed by Congress in 1996.

Note that Contra Costa is disclosing the number of cases in several cities smaller than Benicia.

On March 27, we reported that Orange County CA is also releasing a city-based listing of cases.

We hope the Solano County Counsel will reconsider and permit the Health Department to be more transparent.  Residents and businesses deserve to know more about the facts and trends in our home towns.

Benicia CA, Coronavirus, Covid 19, Solano County CA

Coronavirus COVID-19 – new page on the Benicia Independent

By Roger Straw, April 5, 2020

Information about Coronavirus in Benicia, Solano County and beyond is now easier to find on the Benicia Independent.


BenIndy’s new CORONAVIRUS page shows:

Find the page easily using the “Coronavirus” BUTTON in the menu at top.

And if you are looking for specific information, you can always use the SEARCH box at top left on any page.

Coronavirus, Covid 19, Solano County CA

Northbay Healthcare: Solano County uptick due to more testing

[Editor:   Why is Solano County experiencing a dramatic upward curve of cases of COVID-19?  An email I received today from Northbay Healthcare stated that the “recent uptick in cases is due to an increase in the number of tests performed.”  The message continues, “Nevertheless, testing capability locally remains limited and we continue to test only those at very high risk.”  – R.S.]

NorthBay Healthcare logo

Dear NorthBay Patient,
We are committed to helping you and your family stay healthy during the coronavirus outbreak and to keeping you up–to–date on resources available to you locally through NorthBay Healthcare and other community sources.

We are fortunate that so far the number of people in Solano County who are sick with coronavirus and requiring hospitalization has remained low, but rest assured your local health care community is prepared should we see an increase in the coming days.

To keep tabs on the number of cases locally, check the Solano County Health Department website which is updated daily.  Please note that much of the recent uptick in cases is due to an increase in the number of tests performed. Nevertheless, testing capability locally remains limited and we continue to test only those at very high risk. 

If you are experiencing symptoms and are concerned about COVID-19 you have several options:

To protect our patients and staff, most office visits at NorthBay Medical Practices are being converted to a phone or video visit. If you have a medical concern, or need to connect with a provider for an ongoing condition, call your provider’s office. Chances are your problem can be addressed with a video or phone visit. Please do not come to the office without a scheduled appointment.

We have set up a nurse assist line for our patients who need help accessing community resources such as food, prescriptions and transportation. If you need this type of help please call our nurses at (707) 646–5799.

On behalf of the entire NorthBay Healthcare family, I want to extend our gratitude to you for continuing to shelter–at–home, maintaining social distancing and doing your part to control the spread of COVID-19 in our community.

Stay safe,

Shanaz Khambatta, DO

Shanaz Khambatta, DO
Medical Director, NorthBay Center for Primary Care
Bay Area, Coronavirus, Covid 19, San Francisco Bay Area, Solano County CA

How Solano County’s COVID-19 Dashboard compares to other counties in Bay Area

[Editor: Peter Khoury ranks Solano County’s excellent COVID-19 Dashboard 3rd among the Bay Area’s 9 counties.  He also points out areas for improvement.  Read through to the end for Khoury’s call to action.  – R.S.]

A ranking of Bay Area Counties’ COVID-19 Dashboards

Phoenix Data Project, by Peter Khoury, April 2, 2020

The link article from the Harvard Business Review discusses Lessons from Italy’s response to Coronavirus. In particular they cite the need for lots of data, the need for micro-scale data, and the need for data standardization. The Bay Area is largely falling flat on all of these fronts. I rank the Bay Area counties’ dashboards below, but really they should all be unified displaying lots of consistent high quality information on all of them. At the bottom of the rankings I tell you how to take action.

These rankings are a tongue in cheek way to motivate / shame counties to improve the state of their information and communication with the public. However ideally the counties would all coordinate with each other and unify their information so that we can see trends across the entire Bay Area.

1st Place Santa Clara County

santa_clara_new_hospital_dashboard.png

Santa Clara’s dashboard shot up in the rankings from 6th previously to 1st because it is not just one dashboard it is three. I’ve shown here to the left my favorite of the three, the hospital dashboard. This includes such vital information such as ventilators available and breaks down bed availability into acute beds and ICU beds. The graphs on the righthand side of the dashboard will show evolution of hospital resources over time. Really quality really excellent information.

Two additional asks which would make it even better. Create an API or easy way to download the data. Split the hospitalized patients into age groups like Solano county does.

https://www.sccgov.org/sites/phd/DiseaseInformation/novel-coronavirus/Pages/dashboard.asp

2nd Place Sonoma County

sonoma_dashboard.png

Sonoma County’s dashboard excels. It has

  • hospitalization numbers

  • the number of tests being run

  • the date the data was collected

  • cases by county region

  • the information in text form (if desired)

https://sonomacounty.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=21a1653b79ba42039ff22bcb85fa5b19

3rd Place Solano County

solano_dashboard.png

Solano county promises to have much of the information Sonoma county does but isn’t quite there yet.

The one thing Solano county deserves credit for is separating the cases by age into hospitalized and non-severe. This will be incredibly useful information going forward. I would encourage Solano county to further separate out the 19-64 year old age ranges.

https://doitgis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/6c83d8b0a564467a829bfa875e7437d8

4th Place Contra Costa County

contra_costa_new_dashboard.png

Contra Costa County added information about testing and hospitalizations to their website. They’re also displaying the information as evolving over time which is good. There could be much more information at a finer granularity but its definitely good progress.

https://www.coronavirus.cchealth.org

5th Place Marin County

marin_dashboard.png

Not nearly as good as the Solano and Sonoma but they are still providing hospitalization numbers. Their display of information could use a lot of work.

https://coronavirus.marinhhs.org/sites/default/files/2020-04/covid-19-status-update-4-1-2020-final.pdf

6th Place tie Napa and San Mateo County

san_mateo_dashboard.png

San Mateo isn’t really providing much more than a case count and deaths. They do have this broken down by age but unlike the Solano county data the age breakdown doesn’t give me much additional useful information.

It does show the cases growing exponentially.

https://www.smchealth.org/coronavirus

napa_county_new.png

Napa county doesn’t break down the cases by age but it does breakdown the cases by area.

https://legacy.livestories.com/s/v2/coronavirus-report-for-napa-county-ca/9065d62d-f5a6-445f-b2a9-b7cf30b846dd/

7th Place San Francisco

san_francisco_dashboard.png

These are fixed numbers of cases and deaths with no sense of the growing crisis or the exponential growth of the virus.

https://www.sfdph.org/dph/alerts/coronavirus.asp

Last Place Joint Alameda and the City of Berkeley

alameda_dashboard.png

The Alameda county website is incredibly flawed because of the “* Numbers exclude City of Berkeley cases.” I mean come on guys this is a local, regional, state, national, and global health emergency and Alameda County and the city of Berkeley can’t coordinate with each other?

Take Action

I have found that the best way to improve your local county’s dashboard is to start calling your local politicians and to get your friends to call your local politicians. If you do not live in the Bay Area, go to your local county’s COVID-19 website and place it in these rankings. If you find it lacking, demand more information. At a minimum the website should have the information in bold.

    • COVID-19 Hospitalizations

    • Hospital beds available

    • ICU Beds available

    • Total number of tests conducted (this counts tests run multiple times on one person)

    • Total number of test conducted on unique individuals

    • Total number of tests that were positive for COVID-19