Sonoma County likely to extend home isolation order

The number of local confirmed cases of the coronavirus reported by the county jumped Monday by a quarter, the same day it became apparent Sonoma County’s top public health official likely will extend her home isolation order to May 1, a move that would align the county shutdown with public school closures.

The unprecedented three-week directive by Dr. Sundari Mase, the county’s health officer, is set to expire next week. The county administrator told county employees Monday she expects Mase’s March 17 order to be extended.

In a phone interview, Mase said extending the stay-at-home order, although not guaranteed, could come Tuesday or Wednesday. She said the current order runs through April 7, so immediate action isn’t required.

“We’re actually way ahead of the game in terms of issuing a shelter-in-place order,” Mase said.

Six other Bay Area counties - Marin, San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara - expected Tuesday to extend similar orders through the end of April all have more local cases of the coronavirus than Sonoma County.

County officials reported total confirmed cases increased from 58 Sunday to 73 on Monday night, a 25% boost. Asked late Monday if the additional 15 new cases constitute the beginning of a surge of county residents contracting the infectious disease, Mase said through a spokesman there’s been a steady uptick but no surge of local people stricken or the beginning of one. The spokesman indicated there appears to be a sudden increase Monday but it has more to do with additional cases that emerged over the weekend now included in the overall tally.

Santa Rosa Police Chief Ray Navarro announced earlier Monday three more Santa Rosa police officers tested positive for the coronavirus, bringing the number of confirmed cases in the city police department to eight. The department has more than 170 officers.

The three officers infected work in the department’s field services division, Navarro said. At least one had been self-quarantining before testing positive, and had not been at work since March 14.

An additional seven tests are pending for employees in the police department who may have been exposed to or are showing symptoms of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus, which has resulted in a global pandemic after originating in China in December 2019.

The 73 local coronavirus cases include 37 men and 36 women. Sixteen people stricken required hospitalization or remain in hospitals. Of the total, 59 are active cases, 13 are people who recovered and one person who died, according to county data updated Monday night. Among age groups, residents the hardest hit are people 18 to 49 with 33 cases followed by people 50 to 64 with 22 cases.

County health officials announced the first local resident was diagnosed with the virus on March 2 - a person thought to have contracted it on a cruise - and revealed the first instance of community transmission of COVID-19 on March 14.

Mase said multiple factors have slowed the spread of the virus in Sonoma County.

She noted the county’s shelter-in-place order was issued quickly, when only four people were infected locally. And compared to counties such as San Francisco, Sonoma County is more rural and residents are more dispersed, she said.

Also, the county has ramped up testing efforts in the past few weeks, completing a total of 1,594 tests, as of Monday night. Of those, 95% were negative.

Mase said recently law enforcement, fire and medical professionals who show symptoms are getting a higher testing priority. As of Monday, 107 Santa Rosa police department employees have been tested for COVID-19, Navarro said. Among them, 92 have tested negative.

“While any news of a positive test result is concerning, these latest results are reassuring that the proactive measures our police department is taking are working,” Navarro said in a video presentation. “But we can’t do it alone. We need your help too. Continue to shelter-in-place and please, stay home.”

The county and statewide orders to largely stay at home bar all but businesses deemed essential, such as supermarkets, banks and gas stations, from operating.

Navarro said some residents are ignoring the public health emergency order, and the police department is considering additional enforcement measures if that trend continues. So far, the department has approached those who violate the directive from an educational standpoint rather than issuing citations.

Bay Area counties’ anticipated extensions of isolation orders comes after health officials expressed concerns that the virus will peak in mid- to late April in California.

Gov. Gavin Newsom last week said he expected social distancing and other measures to curtail the virus could last 12 weeks. Newsom’s stay home order, issued March 19, is for an indefinite period.

Regarding Sonoma County’s order, Sheryl Bratton, the county administrator, sent an email Monday to county employees that said: “Our local Public Health Order is generally consistent with the Governor’s Order; however, the Governor’s order has no end date.” Bratton’s email continued: “Last week, the local school districts announced that schools would be closed through May 1.”

President Donald Trump has extended through April 30 social distancing guidelines, ditching his initial, more optimistic goal of reinvigorating American life outdoors by Easter on April 12.

According to a model published by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, the coronavirus pandemic will peak in California on April 24. The model also projects 6,109 people in the state will die, and while researchers didn’t provide data on individual counties, Sonoma County would experience 77 deaths if the county’s death rate matches that state projection. The county’s population is about 500,000.

Mase declined to comment Monday on the institute’s projection because she didn’t know the methods researchers used, but said Sonoma County is also working with researchers to yield some projections of how hard the virus may hit local residents, including how many might be hospitalized and what a surge of cases would look like.

The county health officer said she didn’t need a completed computer model of local case projections to extend her shelter-in-place order. She hopes by later this week to have preliminary data about how effective her directive has been.

“It’ll be really helpful to have numbers about how helpful our shelter-in-place has been,” Mase said.