San Benito County is two COVID-19 infections away from reaching 200 cases total. The county reported its highest number of weekly infections during the last three weeks, including over 40 cases the week of June 6, followed by a week which saw over 20 new infections.
The positivity rate has also been steadily rising since June 1 (3.18%) when there had been 2,771 tests conducted and 88 positive results. As of June 25, the county has conducted 4,769 tests yielding 194 positive results (4.07%), with more results pending.
As of June 26, there are 14 active patients, 182 recoveries and two deaths.
BenitoLink spoke with interim Public Health Officer David Ghilarducci to discuss the recent uptick of positive tests, trends and hospitalizations.
BENITOLINK: Is the county seeing any trends regarding which populations or groups are being infected the most by COVID-19?
GHILARDUCCI: Unfortunately it still appears to be disproportionately affecting our Hispanic and Latinx community the most. Based on the proportion of people in the county versus the proportion that tested positive, that group is overrepresented, unfortunately.
Any ideas as to why?
There are probably a number of reasons. I think one is a lot of folks probably work in essential businesses where they are more likely to come in contact with one another and they can’t work from home. So unlike maybe a tech worker who can pretty much just work from their desk at home, a lot of these folks are out there interacting with the public and other coworkers. So being an essential worker is part of it. I think the other part too is there’s probably some socioeconomic factors like living conditions. Perhaps they are living with larger groups of people in the same home and so that also increases the risk too.
What is contributing the most to the increase in infections?
It’s hard to pinpoint any one thing. We do see some trends. The most common means of getting infected is from close household contact or close contact for a prolonged period of time with another person. Most of the contacts we are seeing are within clusters in households and we’ve seen this kind of blow up when there’s more than one household that gets together and has dinner together or gathers together or whatever they might do. Whenever different households are mixing that’s where most of the spread is happening.
While infections continue to increase, the positivity rate (positive tests divided by total tests) was decreasing through May until June, when there was an increase. Should we expect this trend to continue through the summer as more industries reopen?
I think so. The cases that we are seeing now are related to Memorial Day and perhaps some of the protests that have been going on. We’ve also had lots of people moving into the county, especially the agricultural community because of harvest season and so forth. So as our economy opens up there’s going to be more interaction between households and this is probably going to increase.
I’m very concerned about the positivity rate and the rate that is going up. One of the things that we noticed is that the latest positivity rate we have is higher than it truly is, because we get our data from the different sites and they are quick to report the positives, but then the negative tests that they did kind of filter in over time. What tends to happen is we have a numerator and a small denominator which tends to push the positivity rate up, but it’s kind of a false elevation. The rate is probably not as high as it looks like but it is gradually rising.
Based on the numbers, are holidays or special events big contributors to the numbers or is it a result of less restrictions?
I think it’s partly the less restrictions, but the guidelines that have come out by the state that we are following to the letter are pretty good at minimizing the risk. I think the bigger issue is that people are getting tired and maybe they are seeing some misinformation out there as well.
There were things out there that said this is not worse than regular flu, etc. I think there is part misinformation out there, but also part kind of fatigue. People miss each other. They want to get together. They want to congregate in bars and so forth and I think we let our guard down a little bit as part of what’s going on.
Especially I would say, it probably doesn’t really show in our data in San Benito County, but nationwide it appears to be younger people that are most responsible for the spread right now. So these are people of 20, 30, and even 40 year-old age groups. I think they probably view their personal risk somewhat lower and maybe have decided that social activities and even protests for that matter outweigh any risks that the coronavirus might make.
But it’s important to say that for every 20 or 30 or 40 year-old that has an elderly parent or grandparent, they will pose a risk for those folks who are not going out and folks that being careful are certainly going to be vulnerable to the younger family members bringing the virus to them.
Former Public Health Officer Martin Fenstersheib said the OptumServe site would operate for 60 days. Is that still the case? Has a date been set for closing the site?
The contract was extended through the end of August. So we are looking at a close down date of Aug. 30. We are not sure what we are going to do at that point. I think some of the numbers we’ve heard, it sounds like we could pay to have it continue. The cost is something like $3.2 million a year to do this. I don’t think we have the money to do that, but that’s something we’re certainly looking at.
What’s clear is we are going to need to continue the same level of testing. In fact we need more testing going forward. We are going to have to find ways to build that capacity in a way that our public health budget can sustain it. So it’s a concern, but for now Aug. 30 is the last date for the Optum Serve site.
If it takes two to three days to get test results back and residents are commuting or working, how is it beneficial to get tested?
That is one of the limitations of testing. It only really tells you about right now. It’s even possible you can be infected and the test doesn’t pick it up, like if you are really early in the infection. That’s what we would call a false negative.
Obviously, if you’re symptomatic you want to go to your doctor. You really don’t want to go to the OptumServe site. You want to go through your medical provider and get tested, and that’s important information to help limit the spread.
But for those who want to get tested, and they aren’t having symptoms, OptumServe is good for that. Obviously, that test is only going to really say what’s going on that day and it doesn’t predict the future. It’s a limitation. A lot of testing plans include what we are doing for our nursing facilities. They are doing regular testing every month because one test is not enough to maintain the surveillance.
How many COVID-19 hospitalizations have there been in San Benito County?
Right now we have zero people in the hospital. Over the course of the pandemic, five residents were hospitalized at Hazel Hawkins as of June 26. An additional resident who tested positive for the virus was hospitalized, but this was unrelated to COVID-19.
We never got to the point where Hazel Hawkins was starting to fill up. We’ve been really lucky and I think that has to do with some pretty early aggressive shelter-in-place orders that we did. Dr. Marty Fenstersheib put in the facial covering order long before the state did. I think that’s really helped us.
We have to remember we had one of the first two cases in the state in San Benito County. I remember getting the call on Super Bowl Sunday. We were impacted—a tiny county, one hospital, very early with some of the first cases and yet we managed to keep the numbers relatively low compared to a lot of other places. I really want to thank the people of San Benito County for their diligence in doing that. I think that’s what made a difference. It’s allowed us to reopen.
The fact we don’t have anybody in the hospital right now is really reassuring. What I am worried about though is that this can change quickly.
As I said, right now we are seeing some effects from Memorial Day gatherings. We have not seen the full effects of the Black Lives Matter protests and other kinds of gatherings that are happening related to the reopening, people going to restaurants and bars. Those things have not shown up yet. Unfortunately, it takes three to five weeks to see the effect of those new policies.
So my message to the county is continue the good work, be responsible, think about your neighbors, and the one thing we need to really watch is to not overwhelm our healthcare system because we’re really going to be in trouble if that happens.
If a San Benito County resident is hospitalized here or outside of the county, does that show in the county’s data?
I think our dashboard is just looking at our local hospital. There is a chance that, say you have a Kaiser member in San Benito County and they were hospitalized in San Jose, I think those numbers are counted in Santa Clara numbers but it would be counted as one of our cases. It would show up in our case count because they are a San Benito County resident but they wouldn’t show up on our hospital count. They would show up in the Santa Clara County hospital count.
Do you have an idea of how many San Benito County residents have been hospitalized outside of the county?
According to San Benito County Health and Human Services Agency Director Tracey Belton, 11 residents have tested positive for COVID-19 and been hospitalized outside of the county.
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