Solano will likely face tougher COVID-19 restrictions soon
As the rate of infection continues to rise, county officials say tougher restrictions are inevitable.
(Graphic by Solano News Update)
Solano County residents and businesses will likely find themselves under tougher restrictions at some point over the next to weeks as the rate of coronavirus infections locally continues to climb.
In news interviews on Tuesday, Solano County Public Health Officer Dr. Bela Matyas blamed non-household gatherings for the spike in positive cases.
“The primary driver at the moment, probably not surprisingly, is gatherings by family and friends during Thanksgiving,” Matyas told TV station KRON (Channel 4). “That has already begun to impact our county in terms of numbers, and I anticipate it will continue to show an impact over the next week or week and a half.”
Last week, California health officials announced a new around-the-clock stay at home order that imposed tougher restrictions on residents and businesses, including an outright ban on non-essential gathering and travel. The order rolled out based on a county’s placement in one of five regions, with the restrictions being triggered when an individual region’s available hospital intensive care unit (ICU) capacity dipped below 15 percent.
Solano County is party of the Bay Area region along with around a dozen other counties, and though the region hasn’t met the threshold for the stay-at-home order, some neighboring counties have decided to implement the tougher restrictions out of an abundance of caution.
Last week, Solano County said it would not voluntarily adopt the new restrictions until it was forced to because officials believed it would have a detrimental effect on businesses, which it said were not to blame for the majority of recent positive COVID-19 infections.
County officials didn’t provide any specific evidence to back its assertion that business patronage was not linked to a spike in COVID-19 cases, and its claim appeared to contradict a study released by the Centers for Disease Control in September that drew a connection between coronavirus infections and a person’s recent history of visiting restaurants, bars and similar businesses.
Though Solano County was the first location in the United States with a positive coronavirus case earlier this year and one of the few places in the country with a confirmed co-infection of COVID-19 and the influenza, county health officials have been hesitant to impose restrictions on residents and businesses. When restrictions are put in place, law enforcement agencies have largely declined to uphold them, with the Solano County Sheriff’s Office and several city police agencies pleding not to commit resources toward restriction enforcement.
In social media posts, some police departments said they would refer complaints about restriction-breakers to county health officials. In e-mails reviewed by Solano News Update, the county’s public health office has referred complaints right back to local law enforcement.
What’s resulted from the county’s unwillingness to enforce new restrictions and law enforcement’s decision not to uphold ones in place has been an environment where COVID-19 has been allowed to thrive, resulting in at least three waves of infections and deaths, the most recent wave starting in November.
While the region’s hospital ICU capacity appeared to grow over the weekend, Solano County’s ICU capacity went in the oppsite direction: 40 percent of the county’s hospital ICU bedspace was available last week, but that number decreased to 33 percent on Monday and was down to 30 percent as of Tuesday evening, according to figures reviewed by Solano News Update.
The number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 has also spiked: Less than 30 people were admitted to Solano County hospitals last month with coronavirus-related complications. On Monday, that number grew to 68, and it grew further on Tuesday to 74.
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