Sonoma County expects 2,000 coronavirus cases by end of July

Sonoma County, which only Thursday passed more than 1,000 cases of COVID-19, will likely hit double that number by the end of July, county projections show , as more businesses reopen and people travel outside their homes.

Sonoma County Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase has consistently warned of more infection as shelter-in-place restrictions were lifted and local residents returned to circulation.

But the pronounced rise in transmissions around the county in the weeks since wide-scale business activity resumed has proven startling to many, nonetheless.

By Saturday, the county had posted at least 1,092 COVID-positive cases, up from 564 when the month began, according to public health officials. And the count will continue going up, Mase told county supervisors last week, “because more cases cause more cases.”

The county’s “doubling rate,” or the speed with which that 1,000 should become 2,000 cases, stood at 29 days on Friday.

State modeling released last week projects the county could have as many as 70 COVID-related deaths by late July. As of Saturday it had five.

The county is still working on more locally tailored modeling.

But Mase said residents can affect how sharply any of the numbers actually rise by how carefully they adhere to health orders requiring face covers, social distancing and other mitigation measures as consumers, business owners and social creatures.

Case numbers depend, as well, on how successfully health officials and institutional administrators under their direction contain existing outbreaks that have helped drive the recent spike in infections.

They include at least 29 cases from Crossing the Jordan, a residential recovery program funded by thrift stores and other business ventures that recently closed; outbreaks at several senior care facilities that infected at least 40 workers and residents, including Broadway Villa skilled nursing facility, where 12 patients had been infected at last check; and large clusters in the disproportionately affected Latino community, which now represents 75% of overall cases despite accounting for just more than 27% of the county’s population.

“There’s a bunch of moving parts in this. There’s a lot of unknowns,” Mase told supervisors. “We’re trying our best to mitigate transmissions in these large outbreak settings. But again, because COVID is so transmissible, one case leads to more cases leads to more cases.”

The county entered June in the midst of a steady upward trend that concerned Mase enough that she briefly paused moving forward with reopening new economic sectors, though other California counties proceeded apace.

The Memorial Day weekend had just passed, bringing with it a slew of tourists who had never really stayed away and who were given more reason to visit when outdoor dining was permitted at restaurants, wineries and breweries in the region. Many of Sonoma County’s destination parks had recently reopened, as well.

But after a two-week pause, Sonoma County’s reopening picked up pace, in part under pressure from county supervisors themselves, as well as industry stakeholders anxious about missing out as summer got underway. There also were concerns about high unemployment, months of lost income, high stress levels and related social ills ― factors highlighted by Sheriff Mark Essick in the final days of May, when he briefly pulled his department back from enforcing county pandemic-related health restrictions that went beyond state provisions.

Sonoma County has now reopened most business sectors except those considered highest risk involving large gatherings, like concerts and theatrical productions, indoor swimming pools and spas, festivals and active indoor recreation like skating rinks and laser tag.

Social gatherings larger than 12 also are prohibited, and all activities and businesses are allowed only with strict mitigations including general hygiene, sanitization, health screenings, physical distancing and other measures designed to curb disease transmission.

But even as new swaths of the local economy reawakened, rising numbers of infection were recorded, breaking daily records for new cases. On Monday, there were 50 new cases, the current record. On Saturday, there were 49 after there were 37 on Friday.

“We’re having a lot of cases,” Mase said in her Friday press briefing. “Fifty cases in one day is a lot. (Thursday) was 32. I don’t think it’s completely unexpected. I do think we should follow our other metrics, too” — including hospitalization and mortality, both of which remain relatively low.

Expanding transmission of COVID-19 in Sonoma County is overlapping with an alarming nationwide surge that had the country and at least 12 states, including California, setting new single-day records last week and threatening to overwhelm hospitals in especially hard-hit states like Florida, Texas and Arizona.

The United States reported 40,588 new cases Friday, for a total of nearly 2.5 million cases since March.

The California Department of Public Health reported nearly 6,000 new cases Saturday, bringing the state total to 206,433. Nearly 5,900 people have died in the state.

The upward spiral has been so rapid that governors in 11 states have hit the brakes on further lifting economic restrictions that might contribute to additional viral spread.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who have shown no enthusiasm for COVID-era restrictions, actually rolled back earlier reopenings, mainly by closing bars or barring alcohol sales at such establishments.

In San Francisco and Marin County, which are behind Sonoma County in reopening their economies, officials have announced delays in the next phase. Personal care services, overnight lodging, gyms and fitness studies, all of which had been scheduled to open Monday in Marin County, will remain closed, the county announced late Friday.

In California’s Imperial County, which has fewer than 200,000 residents ― about two-fifths the population of Sonoma County ― nearly 6,000 people have tested positive for COVID-19, including more than 930 currently active cases. Seventy-three people have died.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday that after state officials had worked closely for months with local officials, he wanted them to reinstitute their county stay-at-home order “at their discretion.”

"If they are not able to come to some consensus, I am committed to intervene, as is my role and responsibility as governor in the state of California,” Newsom said. “But I am confident in their capacity to make that determination for themselves, based upon, again, the criteria of conditions that continue to persist in the county.”

Imperial County has transferred about 500 patients to hospitals in other counties over the past five weeks and stands out on the state watch list, distinguished by metrics like a case rate of 680.4 per 100,000 people and a positivity rate of 23, meaning 23% of the people tested were getting positive results. Both metrics measure how widely transmission in the population has occurred.

Sonoma County, by contrast, had a 14-day case rate of 61.7 per 100,000 people ― more than twice its target rate but well below Imperial County and at least 11 other California counties, including 10 that have broken through 100.

Sonoma County’s positivity rate has never been above 3%.

Though earlier this month Mase warned supervisors that Sonoma County’s transmission rate ― a statistical metric used to measure how many people were infected by each COVID-positive person ― ranked third in the state behind Imperial and Kings counties, Mase has been subdued in any expression of concern.

The county’s hospitalization rate remains low, with ample intensive care capacity and available ventilators.

Board of Supervisors Chair Susan Gorin said it appeared that many places struggling the most were those that were slow to embrace stay-home orders or over-eager to reopen.”

“It’s pretty sobering, and Dr. Mase has said that is why we introduced shelter-in-place so quickly, because we did not want to experience the same experience and lack of hospital capacity,” she said.

Gorin also encouraged residents to contemplate their own behavior and think about what they need to do not only to care for themselves, but everyone around them.

“This is living with COVID,” she said. “We’re going to be in this for a long time.”

Said Supervisor Lynda Hopkins, “There is a desperate desire to return to normalcy, and yet that is a very dangerous, seductive thing. We can’t be seduced by the fact that the weather is beautiful and that we still have capacity in our health care system. We have to acknowledge that cases are on the rise, and now, more than ever, we need to just tighten up.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.