Summary: Health Council Meeting – May 4, 2020

By Tia WillMay 6, 20201 comments

by Tia Will

The following is a brief summary of yesterday’s Health Council Meeting. It is comprised of what I considered to be the major points and actions and is in no way meant to be comprehensive.

For clarity, I have divided the meeting into two sections. The first represents updates on items from the last meeting and interim developments as well as answers to specific questions. The second is a discussion of action items to be presented before the Board of Supervisors.

Updates/ Q&A

Brian Vaughn – County Health Officer

  • Phased guidance recommendations will be posted by the State of California on its website. Next update expected 5/8/20.
  • County recommendations are listed on the county dashboard

In addition, social media platforms, and local news programs have been used to inform the public

County actions can be more, but not less restrictive than state regulation

Metrics to advance to next phase of progressive opening include:

  1. Prevalence – Stable or decreasing number of cases
  2. Testing capacity – initial target of 1 test per 1000 residents/day & tracing contacts

Current testing capacity includes:

–  Testing by private state contracted firm at the Fairgrounds- no MD order requiredllr=dfdf98bab&p=oi&m=1101518769315&sit=99enzcbcb&f=64669ab4-a397-4800-9775-08e36bfe25c9″>

Process is online questionnaire, date for drive through testing arranged

Results within 48 hours

–  Private testing through Sutter, Dignity, Kaiser, UCDMC

–  County testing

All above are counted to meet testing metric

In addition, work is currently continuing for a mobile testing unit to meet rural needs.

Capacity of tracing – currently adequate capacity with 30 fully trained tracers

Plan to expand number as needed using state system of tracers who will have all

passed a state mandated training program

  1. Hospital capacity – Yolo currently has sufficient hospital capacity, agreements with surrounding counties and Sleeptrain arena availability for surge
  2. Availability to meet needs of vulnerable individuals

Skilled nursing and assisted living facility parameters discussed.

-visitation restrictions will continue

-daily screening of care providers and other workers

-2 weeks of PPE must be available

– suspected cases will be reported to County and testing, isolation,& tracing initiated

as indicated

The question was raised of what rules will apply to and what support provided to in

home health care givers was raised and the issue will be investigated and reported back on

by the county health officer.

Recommendations to be presented to the Board of Supervisors as included in a letter from

the Health Council to the Board of Supervisors:

In light of the on-going effort to safely and intentionally re-open parts of the economy, and

begin to alleviate pieces of the shelter-in-place order (as it aligns with State guidance), the

Yolo County Health Council has developed recommendations for the consideration of the

Board of Supervisors.

Recommendation 1: The Yolo County Board of Supervisors publicly posts the State of California guidelines on safe business practices to amplify the message, and requests public postings (included in Yolo County HHSA dashboard) of HHSA audit results that positively address specific State requirements.

Recommendation 2: The Yolo County Board of Supervisors and Emergency Operations Center work together to create visibility for where to acquire face coverings for the general population.

Recommendation 3: The Yolo County Board of Supervisors support the acceleration of COVID-19 testing capacity, including mobile testing for vulnerable populations.

Recommendation 4: The Yolo County Board of Supervisors works with local school districts to ensure implementation of protocols for safe return to school practices and provide communication to the public on specific guidelines. To the extent possible, the Yolo County Health Council requests that the Yolo County Board of Supervisors clarify and support continuity between childcare providers and the school systems.

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Author

  • Tia Will

    Tia is a graduate of UCDMC and long time resident of Davis who raised her two now adult children here. She is a local obstetrician gynecologist with special interests in preventive medicine and public health and safety. All articles and posts written by Tia are reflective only of her own opinions and are in no way a reflection of the opinions of her partners or her employer.

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1 comment

  1. Thank you for continuing to follow these meetings for us, Tia. It’s useful to know what county officials are doing and what evidence they are weighing as they consider changes to the current health orders.

    With the push to reopen coming more aggressively on social media and blogs like this, I want to ask the proponents a few questions to consider.

    Are the number of cases in your area increasing, flattening, or decreasing?
    Has it been two weeks since there was a new case?
    Do your hospitals have sufficient capacity for a surge in cases that require extreme intervention?
    Is there a testing plan in place in your area? In the absence of that data, how do you think you are making an informed decision?
    Knowing the adverse consequences of opening early, especially in areas where the disease is just taking off, how can you argue for aggressively reopening and exposing people?
    Don’t you think that decisions about these measures should be taken with information from those whose expertise is pandemics, epidemiology, and public health?
    Here’s the current data about infections and deaths nationwide:
    The White House guidelines for reopening:
    “The first is to see the number of new cases decline for at least two weeks, and some states have met that criteria. But there are three other criteria and we suggest they should all be met,” Rivers said.
    Those include having “enough public health capacity to conduct contact tracing on all new cases, enough diagnostic testing to test everybody with Covid-like symptoms” and “enough health care system capacity to treat everyone safely.”
    None of the states have met these guidelines. Governors may begin to allow some counties to reopen if they do. Reopening without these conditions being met is simply a recipe for further spikes in infection and death rate later in the summer, and for further restrictions on activities and commerce.
    The governor and county supervisors are taking a measured approach to this issue. I prefer their evidence-based decision-making to the emotion-laden commentary elsewhere, though I’m not happy about the absence of testing data. Reality is that if you take New York out of the picture, since their curve is bending, the rest of the country doesn’t look so good. Because the Bay Area and Yolo County took early and strict measures, it looks promising here for a gradual loosening of the restrictions. But nobody should be surprised if we see a spike in infections and deaths over the next few weeks elsewhere.

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