Hello Vikings!
I am back to tell you all a little bit about what’s specifically happening to us, here, in Sonoma County, with the coronavirus. I know that at least for me, my eye is often caught by national news headlines and less by what is actually going on in our community. So, I thought that I’d educate myself, and hopefully you, on what’s happening in Sonoma County.
You’re probably wondering, “How are we doing?”
Unfortunately, the answer is “Not great.”
We are one of the last two Bay Area counties stuck in the most restrictive tier of California's coronavirus reopening plan, and have lost hope of moving upwards. As of the end of September, we were optimistic that we could move from the worst tier of purple up to the slightly better but still bad tier of red. With this change to the red tier, we could open up restaurants, fitness centers, movie theaters, and dance studios to let people back inside up to 50% of capacity. This advancement could have happened as early as Tuesday, September 29th, as the state does its weekly county assessments every Tuesday.
Personally, I thought we were going to advance.
Unfortunately, we didn’t.
That was the week that the Glass fire removed a good amount of us from our homes. Evacuation orders that lead to hotels, friend’s houses, or evacuation centers are not favorable for the mitigation of the coronavirus spread.
So...slight setback.
In addition to this, Sonoma County Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase said on October 9th that the disproportionate number of Latinos that have tested positive for the coronavirus need to be addressed if we wish to reopen Sonoma County any more.
Under new state rules just recently announced, counties must prove that they are reducing the spread in disadvantaged areas in order to progress tiers. So therefore, to move to the red tier, we must have seven or fewer new cases each day per 100,000 residents, a positivity rate of less than 8%, and a reducement of COVID-19 cases in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods.
According to the “Coronavirus Numbers” graphs found on the Press Democrat website, we have met the test positivity rate to move to the red tier, but we still have not fulfilled our other two responsibilities. However, Dr. Mase has stated new steps that Sonoma County is making in order to reduce the spread in Latino communities. She found that the ZIP codes affected the most by COVID-19 were 95401, 95403 and 95407, with 95409 having a slight upward trend. Local health officials are then using this information to target those communities that have been disproportionately affected. Public health officials will continue to do “targeted pop-up testing, outreach and messaging, and bilingual contact tracing in these communities” (Press Democrat). The public health division is also focusing on education initiatives and outreach for essential workers, such as farm workers or domestic laborers.
It is important to realize that the root of Sonoma County’s disproportionate COVID-19 rates stems from racial and socio-economic inequality. We, as a community, must work together to fix this inequality. Mase has talked about measures taken by “counties like Santa Cruz and Solano [that] have rental assistance programs for low-income residents while San Francisco, Alameda and San Diego counties have offered some residents stipends so they can isolate or quarantine” (Press Democrat). I think that we should attempt to implement some of those plans in order to mitigate this issue. If we choose to ignore it, we won’t be able to come up with a situation for this pandemic that will last.
Have a good start of second quarter!
By: Fiona Sweet