State modeling shows smaller Sonoma County peak for coronavirus

State modeling information predicts Sonoma County will need between 600 and 1,000 hospital beds at the local peak of the coronavirus surge, the county’s top public health officer said Friday - significantly fewer than the 1,500 estimated by modeling previously conducted for the county.

The summarization of state modeling data by Dr. Sundari Mase on Friday on a press call follows county efforts to add hundreds of temporary hospital beds and dampen the spread of the coronavirus in anticipation of a surge of cases as the pandemic ratchets up locally over the coming weeks. Mase also said the state modeling data she’d seen indicated that Sonoma County’s peak, previously projected between late May and early June, would be later than that, with new county modeling data created by Imperial College London expected next week.

“If we count the beds, it looks like we’re in a good place,” Mase said Friday.

On Friday evening, the county reported 91 active cases - the highest confirmed active caseload to date locally - out of 180 total, with 87 recovered and two previously reported deaths. More than 2.2 million COVID-19 cases have been confirmed worldwide, and the coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 150,000 people worldwide, although these official numbers omit an untold number of people who have or had the disease but have not been tested.

Mase’s cautious optimism echoes the tone set by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who credited Californians’ willingness to shut down vast aspects of their daily lives during an appearance on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” on Friday.

“We had models showing the massive increase in the total number of infections,” Newsom said, according to Rolling Stone magazine. “But because of 40 million Californians taking these directives very, very seriously ... we have substantially impacted that curve.”

Mase demurred when asked to share the state modeling data, deferring that request to state officials. The Press Democrat requested modeling data conducted by the state for Sonoma County from Newsom’s press office Wednesday evening, but Newsom’s administration had not provided the information as of Friday.

County officials also have declined to release a “data file” prepared by Imperial College London that includes age-specific data related to hospitalizations and mortality.

A county spokeswoman said Thursday that “the data file is a draft document that is evolving, and therefore not something Health will share at this time.”

Fairs still scheduled

The organizers of two large local summer fairs have not rescheduled their events despite the pandemic and shelter-in-place orders implemented by the state and the county that ban large gatherings - which already have been extended once.

The CEO of the Sonoma-Marin Fair, slated for late June in Petaluma, told the Petaluma Argus-Courier that officials would hold the fair if county public health officials give the OK, and the CEO of the Sonoma County Fair said that only an order from Mase would cancel the fair.

Mase, who said earlier this week she didn’t foresee large events like fairs and festivals occurring this summer, said both large gatherings would have to abide by whatever limits state and county officials set forward in any shelter-in-place order that’s effective when those fairs are set to happen later this summer.

“I think the best thing, actually, is to have a discussion with the planners of these events and discuss the reasons why we feel that those events shouldn’t go forward. So that would be what we would do,” Mase said. “And maybe that would obviate the need for any enforcement at all.”

Senior resident positive

The Press Democrat independently confirmed that a resident at the Cogir Retirement Home in Rohnert Park tested positive Wednesday for the coronavirus, the second such instance after a Petaluma senior apartment complex announced one of its residents tested positive for COVID-19 in late March.

Managers of the Rohnert Park independent living community learned of the resident’s potential exposure last week and said it had occurred about a month ago, before they moved in, according to Wally Jossart, president of Cogir Management USA.

The asymptomatic resident remains quarantined in their unit, like other residents adhering to the county’s shelter-in-place order, Jossart said. Two dozen staff members who may have come into contact with the resident have since been tested; six have tested negative and the remaining test results are pending.

Because the resident was asymptomatic, they were denied testing by the county’s public health lab, Jossart said, but Cogir Management was able to acquire tests through a private lab.

“We were very proactive,” Jossart said. “We took that extra step.”

Jossart also said the facility is taking many precautions to protect its residents, including using disposable plates and cutlery for residents’ meals and providing all staff members with personal protective equipment. Staff members are also screened when they enter the living community - their temperatures are taken and they are asked if they’ve had any potential exposure to the virus outside the facility.

Mase would not say how many patients or employees at local care facilities have thus far tested positive for the new coronavirus, saying only that “it’s a very small number.”

She said federal and state public health guidelines allow a patient with COVID-19 to remain in their quarters as long as they can be quarantined and away from other residents, and described a number of instances where a resident could and should be removed from the facility. These include instances where a resident is too sick to be cared for at the facility; they share a room with two or more people; and there’s no way to completely enclose the room with a private bathroom.

“In those cases, we’d have to remove that person from the facility because they can’t be isolated in one place away from other people,” Mase said.

Staff Writer Martin Espinoza contributed to this report.