COVID-19 came for the coastline Monday, with San Diego, Del Mar, Carlsbad, Solana Beach, and Encinitas all announcing that they have or will soon shut down their beaches after learning over the weekend just how difficult it is to keep Southern Californians off the sand and surfers out of the water.

And it’s not just beaches. San Diego’s closure list includes bays, lakes, boardwalks, parks and trails. Del Mar makes mention of its coastal bluffs. Oceanside and Coronado had not yet closed their beaches as of Monday evening, though they did shut down parking lots and playgrounds. Imperial Beach’s waters have been closed due to sewage spills.

The measures announced by the City of San Diego early Monday evening came just as the county health department posted its latest novel coronavirus update, with the case total reaching 230 even as the public health department removed 11 confirmed cases from the count because they were part of a federal quarantines at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar which, officials said, has now ended. The change meant that, while the overall total increased by 25 cases compared to Sunday, there were actually 36 new cases reported once the federal cases were removed.

One of the new cases came from UC San Diego, which announced Monday evening that one of its students, who lived on campus, has tested positive for COVID-19 and is self-isolating on campus. The university did not share additional details on which of the La Jolla university’s six colleges the student attended nor whether he or she was an undergraduate or graduate student.


The university had more than 15,000 students living on campus at the start of the fall quarter, and, as of Monday, roughly 7,840 had canceled their housing for the spring semester. More were expected to do the same ahead of a March 29 deadline.

The lone local fatality so far is a county resident who died in a Santa Clara hospital after traveling to Hawaii. It’s not clear whether the local man, said to be in his 70s, was a passenger aboard the Grand Princess cruise ship which docked in Oakland on March 9 after a two-week to the Hawaiian islands and back.

Dr. Wilma Wooten, director of the county’s public health department, presaged beach closures during the county’s daily news conference Monday afternoon. The region’s top public health cop made it clear that she didn’t miss the wall-to-wall coverage of San Diegans frolicking by the shore and packed onto trails over the weekend. She amended her previous public health order Monday, adding a special clause just for the westernmost reaches of her responsibility.


“If jurisdictions are not able to enforce social gathering, we will close beaches,” Wooten said.

On Friday, local public health officials said they expected testing to ramp up significantly over the weekend, but that increase had not yet arrived Monday though a county official did say that it received an additional government shipment of personal protective equipment. No quantities were specified.

Lack of testing has been particularly difficult for those who are in potentially-fragile health situations.

A San Diego woman, who said her employer forbade her from sharing her name or occupation, said Monday that she gave a sample for COVID testing on Monday, March 16, and still has not received results. Suffering from a persistent cough, shortness of breath and extreme fatigue and 36 weeks pregnant, the local resident said she also has a compromised immune system due to a chronic health condition. She added that her health provider, Sharp Rees-Stealy Medical Group, will not schedule additional prenatal care until she has received the results of her test.


“It’s not even clear at which lab my test is, as the labs don’t have enough reagents,” the woman said.

She added that the situation is particularly concerning because she is isolated at home with a two-year-old and her parents whose seniority would mean that getting infected would come with higher odds of serious complications.

“It would be really helpful to know if I have it, so I can know what to do,” she said. “I hope my baby’s OK, but I really don’t know.”

Reagents, essentially raw chemical mixtures used to extract viral genetic material from throat and nose swabs collected from patients, have recently been subject to nationwide shortages.


Though he had expressed hope for a breakthrough on the reagent front last week, Dr. Eric McDonald, the county’s epidemiology director, said in an emailed comment relayed by public health staff Monday night that the situation remains less than ideal.

“There is still a major shortage nationally and locally of reagents for the initial testing platforms approved by the CDC,” McDonald said. “Other platforms are receiving FDA approval and are beginning to be put into place, but there hasn’t been a significant dent made yet.”

Last week, UC San Diego announced a partnership with five different medical diagnostics manufacturers which it indicates could increase testing capacity by 1,000 to 1,500 tests per day within two to three weeks. The effort, which uses multiple different testing platforms, a move that could help circumvent chemical supply bottlenecks, is not quite ready, a university spokesman said, but news on the project could be forthcoming in a few days.

Novel coronavirus continues to spread among San Diego’s massive contingent of military personnel.


Four staffers at Naval Medical Center San Diego and one sailor aboard an unnamed San Diego-based ship tested positive for COVID-19, according to the Navy.

Three of the hospital staffers are active-duty sailors, a Navy spokeswoman said Monday. Four Marines and 18 sailors in San Diego County have now tested positive for the virus.

As of Friday, the Navy is no longer naming ships with positive coronavirus cases, according to the Pacific Fleet.

All those testing positive are in self-quarantine in accordance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, as are other personnel with whom they had close contact, according to the Navy.


Hospital work areas have been “aggressively sanitized,” the Navy says.

NMCSD is one of two Naval hospitals where service members are sent if they are symptomatic for COVID-19, the other being Camp Pendleton Naval Hospital.

The San Diego Union-Tribune is tracking the following COVID-19 cases among the local military community:

· 8 sailors from unnamed San Diego ships

· 3 sailors and 1 civilian from Naval Medical Center San Diego

· 3 sailors from a Naval Base San Diego schoolhouse

· 3 Marines from Marine Corps Air Station Miramar

· 2 sailors from the USS Boxer

· 1 sailor from the USS Coronado

· 1 sailor at Naval Air Station North Island

· 1 Marine at Camp Pendleton

Staff writers Jeffrey McDonald, Alex Riggins, Andrew Dyer and Gary Robbins contributed to this report.