Santa Clara County Moves To Slow Coronavirus Spread

SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CA — Santa Clara County is trying to upscale testing for COVID-19 as confirmed cases continue to rise, but its test lab can only handle so much, according to county staff.

As the county's count of confirmed cases rose Tuesday to 45, two additional from the day before, city and county officials updated the Board of Supervisors on ongoing efforts to respond to the virus.

Supervisors Joe Simitian and board president Cindy Chavez put a coronavirus county update on the agenda to get a broad overview for the public to better understand the county's preparedness while facing the reality that more cases will likely be confirmed in the near future.

Simitian asked the county's director of public health, Dr. Sara Cody, how serious the infection is to the public and how long the county can expect to be handling further COVID-19 confirmations.

"The best we know is still, on average, each person with the infection will infect an average of two to three additional others," Cody said.

"The truth is there have not been any studies to date because there is another very important tool we do not have, which is an antibody test."

Cody said that means if someone has been exposed to the virus but is asymptomatic, there's not a way to know they have contracted the coronavirus disease unless you test specifically for antibodies in their system.

"Without that, we can't really understand the entire spectrum from people who are infected that show no symptoms, to infected but have very mild symptoms they might not even notice, all the way to severe illness," Cody said.

She said the coronavirus is more serious than the flu because there is no vaccine and there is a lack of prevention tools, and "the proportion of people in vulnerable populations who are at risk for severe illness or dying seems to be much greater than it is for the flu."

She said the "good news" is the wide majority of people who are infected appear to have a "mild illness" similar to a cold or flu, but "the challenge, of course, is we don't understand the extent to which those people may be contributing to accelerating the spread."

For this reason, the county on Monday issued a county-wide ban on public mass gatherings of 1,000 people or greater beginning Wednesday for three weeks, with law enforcement maintaining discretion for how to enforce the ban.

"We may be in this for the long haul," Cody said. "I think we should plan for the worse."

Meanwhile, local law enforcement is also dealing with how to mitigate spread within its jail.

Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith briefed the board Tuesday with news that no confirmed cases, nor suspected cases were in the county jails, but mentioned certain steps to reduce prison populations and further slow any possible spread.

Smith said she is working with the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office for alternate placements and postponing sentencing throughout the county to bring down prison populations, which could include electronic hearings.

Also, the city of San Jose is preparing for further mitigation efforts, with San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo announcing a ban on homeless abatement sweeps in the city.

Supervisor Dave Cortese wanted to know if the county could enforce a similar sweep ban countywide, which county counsel said could happen.

Also, while the county has a system that allows homeless people to get certain healthcare at its hospitals, and county hospitals can currently handle a "significant crisis" with its supply of testing materials and staff, a larger crisis or influx of supposedly sick people would be much more difficult to handle, and hospitals and testing facilities could be overwhelmed.

This issue is also compounded when taking into account the lack of shelter beds throughout the county for homeless people as it is, without the impending threat of infection to homeless and housing insecure people.

"We can anticipate that interventions are only going to become more robust, and I won't be surprised a week from now if we do have schools or school districts that are shut down," Liccardo said Tuesday.

"And I won't be surprised, obviously, if we're going to have to do an awful lot of work that we never thought was within the realm of government."

This could include delivering meals to children "who have no other source of nutrition" aside from school lunches, he said.

"We are seeing transmission slow dramatically in those areas where they're doing the testing and the contact testing," Liccardo said.

"We need to scale, not in a matter of two-times or five times, but a hundred-times or more," Liccardo said.

He added that he wants to offer any resources from his city to continue to slow the spread of the virus, including enlisting international resources if necessary.

"Waiting for the CDC at this point isn't going to work," Liccardo said.

"I would acknowledge that this county does not have the resources within its bounds to suddenly get access to all those labs."

County counsel James Williams said up scaling the county's testing is "absolutely dependent on private labs," which includes commercial labs equipped with far more testing capabilities than the county's.

But Dr. Jeff Smith, county executive, told the board that the county is still waiting to hear from its private lab partners on when or how they can ramp up testing, but that between the county's and Stanford's lab, the county can only test fewer than 150 individuals per day.

Also Tuesday, San Jose City College and Evergreen Valley College suspended in-person classes through at least Friday.

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