Sonoma County officials likely to order people to shelter at home

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Sonoma County residents will probably be told this week to shelter in place at home for up to three weeks and avoid contact with others to slow the spread of the coronavirus, joining at least 7 million people in six other Bay Area counties subject to restrictions on travel and business operations.

Late Monday, the county’s interim public health officer Dr. Sundari Mase had not yet decided whether to order residents here to stay home and avoid all but essential errands. Her decision whether or not to restrict most people to stay in their homes could come as early as Tuesday morning.

Mase and other county officials were mulling what would be unprecedented restrictions on daily public life, as two new cases of coronavirus emerged Monday in the county. Both involve health care workers who contracted the highly contagious, infectious disease through transmission in the local community.

The first confirmed county case of the virus involving a resident here infected from an unknown local source was disclosed Saturday, marking an escalation in the local public health emergency due to COVID-19. Then Sunday county health officials revealed a second person in the county has been infected within the community, but gave no details about that person’s situation.

The latest cases bring the number of people here diagnosed with coronavirus to six, including four infected locally and two sickened on cruises to Mexico. Both remain hospitalized. Three of the county residents who have gotten the virus via community transmission are health care workers.

Last week the World Health Organization recognized the global spread of the coronavirus and officially called it a pandemic. It started in China in early January and has spread to at least 140 countries, infecting 179,000 people and killing 7,100, including 86 in the United States, as of Monday night.

The increase in local coronavirus patients is tipping the scale toward a countywide shelter-in-place order that would be similar to the action taken Monday in the San Francisco Bay Area, local health officials acknowledged.

“That’s likely something that’s going to happen in this county,” Mase said in an interview. “When, we can’t say.”

As of Monday night, Sonoma County remains one of three counties in the Bay Area not yet taking that stay-at-home posture in advance of an anticipated explosion of coronavirus cases in California. Earlier in the day, San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Marin, Contra Costa and Alameda counties and the city of Berkeley announced restrictions effective Tuesday through April 7 that will drastically alter the way of life for most people in the Bay Area. Those counties told people to stay home as much as possible and businesses should limit or cease operations except for certain essential activities

Mase, the county’s top public health official, said that “you can’t just spring that on people,” but said the imposition of a requirement to sharply limit excursions outside the home “could happen at any time.”

San Francisco’s shelter-in-place order lists a number of essential businesses that can remain open, such as hospitals, grocery stores, shelters, gas stations, childcare centers, banks, and newspapers. Restaurants may continue to operate, but only for delivery and carryout service.

County Supervisor Chairwoman Susan Gorin said she expects Mase to announce her decision on this key issue Tuesday morning, but it would not be effective until Wednesday.

Gorin said county leaders had been discussing the implications of a mandatory order to stay home versus an advisory one, which could allow companies to keep employees working outside their homes.

Gorin said she will stay home Tuesday and watch the supervisors’ board meeting rather than attend in order to underscore the important advice from U.S. public health officials and the White House, for people 65 and over to stay home.

“I need to make a very important public statement: This is serious, we will get through this, but you have to take care of yourself,” Gorin said.

Meanwhile, the two local health care workers county officials disclosed Monday have been diagnosed with coronavirus are now in isolation at home, Mase said. She declined to reveal anything additional about the individuals or whether they worked at the same medical center. One of two is a person who was tested outside the county but lives here, she said.

The rising number of local cases is a sign of the increase of people here getting tested for the virus. However, when considering Sonoma County’s population is about 500,000, only a small percentage of residents have been tested. The county public health lab, which began conducting tests Thursday, had by Monday processed 100 to 105 tests for the coronavirus, not including at least 13 local patient samples that went to state and federal labs. Mase said she does not know how many tests commercial labs have conducted here because those labs are only required to report positive results to the county, although she is talking with those companies to find ways to get that information.