Sonoma County reaches 120 cases of coronavirus as swab shortage hinders testing

Results from roughly 200 ?tests for the coronavirus are now coming in daily in Sonoma County, revealing a handful of new cases each day and a larger group of people getting tested but not yet infected with COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.

The county reported five new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, bringing the total to 120 cases detected among 2,791 people tested so far. That includes 81 active cases, 38 people who have recovered and one death of a local man who succumbed to the illness March 20.

Public Health Officer Sundari Mase said a network of commercial, government and hospital-based laboratories have increased their capacity to run tests, but they are still hampered by a shortage of specimen swabs needed for clinicians to collect samples from people’s noses and throats.

“The big issue is the swabs,” Dr. Mase said during the county’s Board of Supervisors meeting. “They’re worth their weight in gold.”

Swabs are in short supply across the nation and California.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday announced he was launching a new task force with a mission to address the testing shortfall, saying that more testing was a crucial public health tool in the state’s effort to prevent widespread illness from overwhelming hospitals.

Mase said the county has so far received no support from the state or federal government in getting swabs, so health officials have tried to get creative. The county has tapped area STD clinics for chlamydia swabs, but those supplies have been wiped out as well.

Mase said Kaiser and Sutter have given the county swabs, and some have “come to the EOC miraculously, I don’t know from where.” In all, the county has 1,000 swabs remaining to continue its aggressive surveillance program targeting inmates and law enforcement officials at the county jail, and people within the homeless and skilled nursing communities.

“That’s just where we are,” Mase said. “We just need to get more swabs.”

The county is anticipating a peak of cases in late May or early June with 1,500 people requiring hospitalization.

That data, released last week by the county, was developed by an epidemiologist at Imperial College London using demographic and other data unique to Sonoma County. The county is expecting an additional set of projects from the London epidemiologist that will include the overall number of people expected to be stricken with COVID-19, not just hospitalizations, and projections for the number of deaths for different demographic groups.

In an interview Tuesday, Mase said that her own “back of the hand calculation” is that hospitalizations represent roughly 20% of all cases, putting an estimated number of people infected with COVID-19 at the peak at about 7,500.

Other models, including a widely cited study done by University of Washington, have put the peak earlier. But Mase said those were based on “broad brush characteristics” for the whole state and not the kind of county-specific data used to develop the projections she’s received from the London expert.

Still, anticipating how many people will get sick when is a moving target, one influenced by how well people abide by isolation orders and other measures meant to prevent people from spreading the virus to one another.

“It could change over time,” Mase said.

Lake County public health officials Tuesday reported a second case of COVID-19 detected there and announced the extension of the county’s shelter-in-place order through May 3 - a move Sonoma County and many other Bay Area jurisdictions made one week ago.

With just two cases of the virus detected so far, the county has been slower to show evidence of spread of the respiratory illness within the community. Lake County Public Health Officer Dr. Gary Pace acknowledged the financial hardships but keeping people at home is the clearest method of “giving our local health care system the best possible chance to keep Lake County’s cases at a manageable level,” he said in a statement.

“There are clear indications regional activity of the virus continues to escalate,” Pace said.

The second case appears to have been from contact with a known case at an out-of-county workplace, the county reported. A family member of the individual who first tested positive was confirmed as the second case, the county said.

Schools in Lake County will also extend the distance-based instruction through the end of the academic year, Pace said, “unless the situation improves and warrants a safe return to the classroom.”

Because of the threat of wildfire in Lake County - where roughly 50% of the landscape has burned in colossal fires over the past five years - the county is adding landscapers and tree trimmers and others working on wildfire abatement projects as essential workers.

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 707-521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.