Sacramento health chief ‘cautiously optimistic’ county may escape worst virus consequences
Sacramento County’s health chief said this week he is cautiously optimistic county residents and local hospitals are taking steps that will reduce illnesses and deaths in the coming critical weeks of the fight against the highly contagious coronavirus.
Speaking to The Sacramento Bee, Dr. Peter Beilenson said he believes residents have been doing enough “physical distancing” in the last two weeks to cut into the expected upcoming spike locally in cases.
But, he said, the virus remains a major health issue, and it would be a huge mistake to underestimate its ability to spread widely through the community. The county is not past the worst of it yet — local health officials say they expect the crunch moment to come in a few weeks.
So far, 164 county residents have been infected by the virus and six have died in the five weeks since the virus first showed up in Sacramento.
Beilenson urged county residents to double-down on efforts to stay away from others, saying any incremental efforts to avoid inter-personal contact will improve the area’s ability to avoid the kind of devastating hit some areas of the country have suffered, notably the Seattle area a few weeks ago, New York and New Jersey now, and potentially other areas, including Chicago and New Orleans.
Beilenson last week ordered the closure of bars and restaurants in Sacramento County and called on employers to send non-essential office and workplace employees home. Gov. Gavin Newsom has done the same statewide.
“We are doing well (overall),” he said. “There is more than we can do. Simple things can make a huge difference. One visit to the grocery store a week, instead of two. ... Work from home.”
Cracking down on ‘bad actors’
Beilenson personally drove to a bar after getting complaints and, finding it packed with people sitting shoulder to shoulder, told the bar to shut down.
The bartender complied. It was St. Patrick’s Day. “He was very pleasant fellow. ... He said he didn’t know (about the closure order),” Beilenson said. “I’m not sure if I believe him.”
The health chief said the county has been getting phone complaints about other businesses violating the order. Starting next week, he said county code enforcement will be going out to non-complying business. They will focus on “bad actors” and tell them to follow state and county coronavirus safety rules.
Prediction on when ‘stay at home’ order ends
Beilenson declined to say when he thought the county could ease the “stay at home” order to allow more social movement and more basic industries and workplaces to reopen — but suggested it people should not expect a quick turnaround in the next couple of weeks. Infections remain on the upswing.
“I’m not saying we need to keep this in place 18 months,” he said, “but I am saying another month and one-half probably makes a lot of sense.”
“As this goes along, if it looks like we are bending the curve a bit, we may let loose a little at a time, especially if we have the antibody test (see below).”
Surge capacity at local hospitals
Beilenson said Sacramento County hospitals have been doing a “good job” limiting elective surgeries and procedures to free up beds and resources for the oncoming spikes in coronavirus cases.
Combined with residents properly social distancing, Beilenson said he is cautiously optimistic that preparations have bought enough time for hospitals to increase its surge capacity and not be overwhelmed with a wave of cases.
He said there are about a couple hundreds beds over eight hospitals that are available and ready to treat hospitalized COVID-19 patients, including intensive care unit beds, medical/surgical beds and surge capacity beds.
Healthcare providers are still upping their capacity, Beilenson said, rapidly building tents outside to free up more space in hospitals.
The Army Corps of Engineers disclosed on Friday that they are likely to set up a 360-bed field hospital at Sleep Train Arena in North Natomas, to handle both COVID-19 patients and other trauma patients to take potential load off of California hospitals.
How many patients are in local hospitals?
At the moment, the University of California Davis Medical Center in Sacramento reports it is treating 8 virus patients.
Placer County’s hospitals were treating 54 patients who may have the virus, said county spokesperson Chris Gray-Garcia.
Marshall Medical Center in Placerville reports one patient with a respiratory illness that may be caused by the coronavirus.
Yolo County, Dignity Health, Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Health declined to say how many COVID-19 patients they are treating.
Testing has improved
Beilenson said the county’s coronavirus testing has improved, but still is nowhere near where it should be. The county still suffers from a lack of test kit implements.
The area got a boost earlier this week when a private clinical testing company, Verily, set up a drive-through testing center in Cal Expo. That operation was testing more than 100 people a day as of Wednesday, and has the capacity potential to push that substantially higher depending on testing kit availability from Verily, Beilenson said.
Unfortunately, many of the test results can take up to six or even 10 days to come in, meaning a person who gets a negative test result has already days of continued exposure.
When can non-symptomatic people get tested?
With testing capacity limited, almost all testing has been focused on the people who are very sick, people who are at high-risk for suffering the worst effects of COVID-19, or on healthcare workers dealing with coronavirus cases.
The Verily project at Cal Expo has extended testing now to people who have milder symptoms, but Beilenson said it’ll be “at least two to three weeks” before people without symptoms but who are worried can get tested.
Beilenson emphasized again that it’s vital that seemingly healthy people without symptoms social distance, since they could still be exposed or be asymptomatic carriers of the virus.
And tests still have their limits: “Remember, just because you had a negative test doesn’t mean you can’t come down with the virus,” Beilenson said.
Antibody tests
Beilenson said a different type of test — a blood test that can detect antibodies made to respond to the virus’ attack — may be the better bet in helping determine how bad the local infection peak will be, and then how soon after that people can start going back to work.
Antibody tests, which could be available in a few weeks in Sacramento, will reveal what percentage of the population has already had the virus. Those people would be considered unlikely to get it again.
As that number or percentage grows, he and Sacramento County leaders will become more confident about allowing people to get back to work and business.
Warning to Trump
Beilenson challenged the Trump administration’s push to reopen commerce and business life in some areas of the country in the next few weeks, saying that could cause spread of the virus.
The administration said on Thursday it would review its data this weekend and advise the president on a possible rating system of which counties are high, medium or low risk for virus spread, suggesting states and local governments can reopen lower-risk areas to more public movement sooner.
Beilenson said it’s “a huge mistake” to categorize an area as low-risk and safer for reopening until it’s clear the virus spread in general is on the downturn. “It’s certainly possible in another month and a half, we think we will have very good evidence then about how many communities are going to have a surge problem versus not.”
He said there is “a lot of evidence from the Centers for Disease Control (that) there are other parts of the country that could take off (soon with new cases) like New York did.”
“We have decent time to flatten the curve,” he said. Efforts by hospitals and public health officials “would be totally lost” if social distancing trends were suddenly returned to pre-pandemic levels.
This story was originally published March 28, 2020 at 5:00 AM.