With its mountain climate, sandy beaches and expansive ski slopes, the Lake Tahoe area is one of the most popular destinations for Northern Californians looking to escape.

But the coronavirus pandemic knows no bounds. In fact, slipping away to the Sierra Nevada right now is more dangerous than you might think.

With at least 30 confirmed cases in the area to date, COVID-19 is spreading around Lake Tahoe.

That’s why health officials, local politicians and tourism bureaus have taken the unprecedented step of telling visitors — including homeowners who have a primary residence outside the region — to stay away.

“We absolutely value our second-home owners,” Dr. Aimee Sisson, the Public Health Officer of Placer County, told the Bay Area News Group. “They are a critical piece of the Tahoe community and the Tahoe economy and we love them and we want them to come back when the coronavirus is over.

“But now is not the time.”

In a letter to Placer County homeowners obtained by this news organization, Sisson warned readers about the region’s limited hospital capacity and said “any impression that there is a ‘safe’ haven from virus transmission is false.”

Facing concerns about hospital capacity and a potential influx of visitors looking to escape to the region, Dr. Nancy Williams, the Health Officer in El Dorado County, issued a “no-travel” order on Friday, April 3 to reduce the number of non full-time residents in the Lake Tahoe basin.

“It’s time to take this very strong message to those who are not already residing in South Lake Tahoe: if you have no essential function and you are here, please go home; if you have no essential function and you are not here, please stay home,” Williams wrote.

At approximately 22 miles long and 12 miles wide, Lake Tahoe and its surrounding area is geographically diverse. The lake is bordered by five counties: El Dorado, Placer and Nevada counties on the California side and Washoe and Douglas counties on the Nevada side.

There are around 40,000 permanent residents in the region, mostly in South Lake Tahoe and Truckee

Tahoe Forest Hospital, which serves the Truckee region and residents of four counties, has about 25 beds, including just six in the intensive care unit. Barton Memorial Hospital, located in South Lake Tahoe, which is part of El Dorado County, has eight intensive care unit beds.

“We have very limited resources up here, a small hospital system that’s doing a remarkable job getting ready for a projected surge, an inflection that we will likely have,” South Lake Tahoe mayor Jason Collin said. “We could very easily be overwhelmed and that’s the biggest thing that we want to prevent with our healthcare system up here.”

With a population of about 24,000 primary residents, Collin confirmed South Lake Tahoe is slightly larger than the town of Truckee, which is located off Interstate-80 and about 30 minutes northwest of the lake. The line of thinking there isn’t much different.

“We’re a welcoming community,” Truckee mayor Dave Polivy said. “But we’re a welcoming community when the time is right.”

A destination that prides itself on hosting outsiders had no choice but to change its tone last month. Carol Chaplin, the president and CEO of the Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority, said that around the time when Bay Area schools began to close, the Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority paused all of its advertising and radically altered its messaging.

“It was intuitive for people to say, ‘Let’s go to our favorite backyard and recreate,’ ” Chaplin said. “The kids are out of school, I can work remotely and we can get away from this.’ That’s when we started to put our messaging out that said, ‘The mountain town you love can be loved from afar. Stay home and stay safe.’ “

The Tahoe officials we spoke with confirmed they’re still seeing people with second homes drive into the region and disregard Gov. Newsom’s shelter-in-place order, which also threatens to strain the supply chains at local grocery stores and pharmacies.

Despite telling people with second homes who pay mortgages, property taxes and utility bills for houses in the area to temporarily stay away, Collin said the vast majority have shown a willingness to cooperate.

“98 percent of the people understand that these are exceptional times and we need to take exceptional measures to try and keep communities safe and most people are very supportive and understand while they would like to come up to their second homes, this isn’t the time,” Collin said. “Then there are a small percentage of people who are really angry and feel entitled.”

More than three weeks after local ski resorts such as Northstar, Heavenly and Squaw Valley shut down operations and laid off seasonal employees, officials such as Collin and Polivy are tasked with overseeing an economic recovery that can only begin if the people who largely drive local business — tourists and second homeowners — stay away.

“I own a retail store, I’m not even a part-time mayor, I’m a semi-time mayor,” Polivy said. “I’m a dad, I’m a husband, I’m a neighbor and I think no matter where you live, we all want our economy to get back to normal.”

Nearly every business in the region has suffered, but few have seen their revenue streams dry up as quickly as vacation rental companies. Jim Winterberger, the president of Tahoe Getaways and the chairman of the board for Visit Truckee, said there’s no way to prepare for the current reality.

“As part of our business continuity plans, we always plan for a wildfire or a blizzard on a holiday weekend, things that cause significant disruption,” Winterberger said. “But I don’t think anybody was ready for this. In fact, I know no one was ready for it.”

Winterberger said tourism in Nevada County generates $350 million of revenue annually and keeps more than 4,000 people employed, but those numbers will shrink in 2020. Even in his position with a rental company, Winterberger explained why it was important for his business to get out ahead of some of the local measures.

“Early on we made the decision to pump the brakes and kind of unwind leisure travel,” Winterberger said. “We thought that was the right thing to do with the best interest of the community in mind.”

Determining when businesses will reopen remains impossible to forecast, but officials said people are collectively turning their attention toward the summer months and expressing cautious optimism that visitors and second home owners will soon be welcomed back.

Even if social and physical distancing measures are in place and large gatherings are restricted, the politicians doubling as business owners are hopeful that keeping visitors out now will allow them to open back up soon.

“We’re lucky enough to live in this beautiful place and we get to live where most people get to vacation,” Collin said. “We don’t mind sharing it, we just need people to wait until this is over and then say, ‘Hey, come back up here’ and whatever precautions are in place at the time, we’ll stick with that.”