Lake County has its first case of coronavirus, two months after the rest of Bay Area

More than two months after the new coronavirus officially made landfall in the Bay Area, the first person in Lake County has tested positive for the virus.

The positive test in the county on the northern outskirts of the metropolitan Bay Area was confirmed by Lake County’s public health officer on Sunday, two days after Sonoma County surpassed 100 cases.

And while Sonoma County’s caseload grew to 111 on Sunday, with 20 people hospitalized, Lake County’s first resident to test positive is recovering at home in isolation.

The rural county had so far been able to defend against the new coronavirus, which is known to cause the respiratory disease COVID-19, by taking aggressive measures in lockstep with its more populous Bay Area neighbors to the south.

The county’s first positive test came 19 days after Lake County issued a shelter-in-place order and two weeks after officials shuttered one of the county’s key economic engines, recreational activity on Clear Lake, to prevent the spread of the virus.

“All of the efforts people have been making over the last month to avoid travel and unnecessary activity have paid off,” Lake County Public Health Officer Gary Pace said in a statement Sunday. “Compared to Sonoma County and the Bay Area, we have had a few extra weeks to prepare for the presence of the virus in our midst. Almost certainly, we would have had cases earlier, and seen a sharper rise in numbers, had we been less proactive in recent weeks.”

The case comes more than two months after Santa Clara County officials on Jan. 31 announced the Bay Area’s first case, a man who returned Jan. 24 from a trip to Wuhan, China. That case represented just the third in California and the seventh in the United States.

Since the man landed at Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport, California’s caseload has grown to more than 14,800, and there are more than 330,000 cases nationwide, including nearly 9,600 deaths.

Sonoma County, which detected its first case on March 2, crossed a grim milestone this past Friday, reaching 100 confirmed coronavirus cases. It has added 11 since, including four more Sunday. About 4% of the 2,373 Sonoma County residents have tested positive for the virus.

Sonoma County Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase had promised to release more detailed demographic information once the county reached 100 confirmed cases. Among the new information likely to be released in the coming days, Mase has said, is an age breakdown for those seeking treatment at area hospitals, locations for the county’s now 31 travel-related cases, underlying medical conditions and more.

“We have to analyze and see what the trends show,” Mase said. “That’s something we plan to do this week. (We will) take a look at all of these cases, see what information we have, and which things we can give out.”

Mase said each of the 111 cases have generated a form with various demographic markers, but health officials have not yet analyzed that information. Among county officials’ considerations is whether any given data point has enough company to limit the risk of identifying a particular patient.

As such, Mase doesn’t know if the county is prepared to release information about the race of those diagnosed or hospitalized, the travel history of residents to any given, specific destination, or whether any additional information could be released about cases in children, where just four have so far been infected.

Mase said Sunday that county officials had not yet had those discussions, or started an analysis to decide what information the county would release publicly.

On a day highlighted by dire warnings at the national level, where U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams compared the impending death toll from coronavirus to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York City or the Pearl Harbor attack that preceded World War II, county leaders struck a more reassuring tone.

Mase said Sonoma County is on a different trajectory, with a more flattened peak predicted to hit two months from now, according to local modeling data drafted by Imperial College London and unveiled by county officials Thursday.

“I think we are seeing that we’re ahead of the curve,” Sonoma County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Susan Gorin said. “I’m hopeful we’ll stay within capacity, and that we can preserve lives as well as minimize the risk and exposure of our health care workers.”

Lake County’s first positive test appears to have come as a result of contact with a known case at an out-of-county workplace, according to the release. The person remains in isolation at home, and is doing well. There is no evidence of community spread in Lake County, according to the release.

County officials are working with the person to trace his or her contacts with others.

“In order to slow community spread, we want to take whatever steps possible to identify any close contacts that could be infected, and separate the sick people from those that aren’t sick,” Pace said in a statement.

You can reach Staff Writer Tyler Silvy at 707-526-8667 or at tyler.silvy@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter ?@tylersilvy.