On Tuesday, during the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors meeting, Contra Costa Health Services reported that as many as 14,000 people in the county could die from the coronavirus pandemic.
Although that is in a worst-case scenario, Contra Costa County Health Officer Chris Farnitanohe explained this would double or even triple the county death rate each week during the peak of the virus.
Contra Costa Health Services Director Anna Roth presented an update on the County’s response to the Coronavirus and warned the Board of Supervisors that the “surge” in cases has not yet hit the county.
Roth said last week when she reported to the Board of Supervisors, they had just 71 cases, today they have 212 cases with 3 deaths. Of the 212 cases, 23 are currently hospitalized with 11 of those in the intensive care while they are waiting for results of 29 who are hospitalized—of those, they are in the intensive care. (note – later in the day, the updated date released by Contra Costa Health Services showed 222 cases)
“I gave you the numbers of 212 cases, but we know that number is much higher due to the fact we do not have widespread testing occurring in our county,” stated Roth. “We are closely tracking those that are hospitalized because this is an important indicator of the surge we expect in Contra Costa county.”
Roth explained they had around 1,100 beds available across the county and plan for an additional 1,096 beds for a total 2,267 beds which does not include the alternative sites.
Roth said the biggest needs right now in Contra Costa County is gowns as they only have 1,000 left in the central supply. They are also in need of medical grade cleaning supplies.
Roth closed her portion of the presentation highlighting their biggest concern is with the workforce and being able to meet the challenge—the county is going to need a significant amount of workers in the coming weeks as they hit the surge.
Contra Costa County Health Officer Chris Farnitanohe reported that there were clinical trials and no medication available that works, and vaccines will be even longer. He said with treatment, the critical factor has been the availability of ventilators—currently have 76 and have 100 more being ordered.
Farnitanohe warned they are not going to save the most lives through ventilators, but rather the best way to prevent death is to reduce the infections and prevent people from needing the ventilator in the first place. The other critical factor is supply of workers and personal protective gear.
Farnitanohe then went into modeling to see what the county could expect in hospital rates and loss of life which includes a lot of different factors.
“We know that looking at some of the models in number of deaths during the next several months from this covid-19 pandemic could range anywhere from 2,000 as high as 14,000,” said Farnitanohe. “We have a lot of different ranges and a lot of it is based on number of cases we have and how effective our social distancing is.”
He continued by saying he didn’t know exactly when they will see a surge that other parts of the country has already seen. The best guess he said was mid-April to mid-May.
He also explained the issue with testing limitations and delays in results saying that for every positive test, there could be 5-to-10 people who have covid-19 who either haven’t gotten a test or had results back.
Farnitanohe says at the moment, the San Francisco Bay Area has avoided the situation in Italy who have had more than 10,000 deaths and New York state where they had 1,000 deaths compared to California who has around 150 deaths noting the epidemic started sooner on the west coast.
“At lot of that is due to the early social distancing that were put in place,” said Farnitanohe who said now Chicago, Detroit and New Orleans where hospitals are being impacted. He continued by saying those situations could happen here if they relax the social distancing. “Some of the modeling is predicting up to 5,000 deaths a week in California which would be about 600 deaths in the central bay area. For contra costa county would be 100 to 200 deaths a week. For a baseline, there is about 140 deaths a week in Contra Costa County. So this could be looking at a doubling or tripling of death rate during the peak of the crisis.”
He did say he hoped they could avoid this type of scenario if they do not relax their efforts to reduce the curve. He then highlighted that the 7-Bay Area counties have extended the Stay-At-Home order through May 3 (released Tuesday).
He also highlighted that when it comes to alternative care sites, the Antioch Fairgrounds will be up next week. Looking at the other sites in Richmond and other sites throughout the county along with scaling up hotel rooms to be available for homeless or those awaiting a test or need to be quarantined for 14-days.
The county also reported Monday that they have 222 confirmed cases of coronavirus (COVID-19). They still have 3 deaths.
Overall Totals As of 3/31/2020 at 2:12 p.m
- March 31 – 222 cases / 3 deaths
- March 30 – 187 cases / 3 deaths
- March 29 – 175 cases / 3 deaths
- March 28 – 168 cases / 2 deaths
- March 27 – 151 cases / 2 deaths
- March 26 – 147 cases /1 death
- March 25 – 108 cases / 1 death
- March 24 – 86 cases / 1 death
- March 23 – 71 cases / 1 death
- March 19 – 42 cases
- March 18 – 41 cases
- March 8 – 9 cases
- March 3 – First confirmed case in the county
The health department continues to maintain its stance that it is not going to be releasing the cities of those infected or hospitalized.
For more information about the Coronavirus in the County, visit: www.coronavirus.cchealth.org
