Dear Friends,

Saw this interesting article about contact tracing, a key step to ending the quarantine. This article is from NPR and makes a state by state comparison on contact tracing:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/28/846736937/we-asked-all-50-states-about-their-contact-tracing-capacity-heres-what-we-learne

The CDC briefly describes contact tracing this way:

Key Concepts

• Trace and monitor contacts of infected people. Notify them of their exposure.
• Support the quarantine of contacts. Help ensure the safe, sustainable and effective quarantine of contacts to prevent additional transmission.
• Expand staffing resources. Contact tracing in the US will require that states, tribes, localities and territorial establish large cadres of contact tracers.
• Use digital tools. Adoption and evaluation of digital tools may expand reach and efficacy of contact tracers.

Seems like our Yolo County "Roadmap to Recovery" should include a plan for contact tracing in our county.  Here is the current version of the roadmap, which is a work in progress.

https://www.yolocounty.org/health-human-services/adults/communicable-disease-investigation-and-control/novel-coronavirus-2019/roadmap-to-recovery

Regards,

John

Dear Friends,

I can only imagine you saw this exciting headline in the LA Times or other paper (Davis Enterprise?): https://lat.ms/3aPlyaX

L.A. County and city announce free COVID-19 testing for all residents

This is terrific!

Meanwhile, how are we doing in Yolo County?  The Health Department updates the Yolo County Covid-19 Dashboard daily.  (Thank you!).  Here it is:

https://www.yolocounty.org/health-human-services/adults/communicable-disease-investigation-and-control/novel-coronavirus-2019/dashboard-and-documents

The Dashboard shows that 1990 tests have been done and since we have a population of 220,500 (how did we get THAT big?!) as of 2019, that means that slightly less than 1% of the population of Yolo County has been tested.

Oh.

Can we do better than that?

There have been 16 CV associated deaths in Yolo County (11 of residents of Long Term Care Facilities) and 163 confirmed cases (96 outside of Long Term Care Facilities).

So, that's 96 non-institutionalized cases in a population of 220,500.  Or .04% of the Yolo County population.  That is NOT 4% but four one hundredths of one percent.  

I am quite confident that more testing would reveal more cases… for one thing, the dashboard shows we have had cases all over the County.

Can we please do more testing?  

Regards,

John

PS  If Yolo County does not have the resources to do SIGNIFICANTLY more testing, perhaps we could join other Sacramento Metro health districts and scale up across the region.

By Eileen M. Samitz

I, like many, are grateful to hear that Yolo County has recently required face coverings for the public including essential workers. Many Davis residents have been requesting it, so appreciation goes to Yolo County Health Officer Dr. Ron Chapman for implementing this new face coverings policy.

However, I am very concerned about the County’s current plan of how overspill from our two local hospitals would be handled should we have a COVID-19 “surge” locally. As things stand now, overspill patients from our small Sutter-Davis (48 beds) and Woodland (156 beds) hospitals would be sent to Sleep Train Arena (formerly Arco Arena) in Sacramento. Since we only have these two small hospitals in Yolo County, and although some extra capacity has been planned, it is very possible we would exceed that limited capacity. Davis alone has over 69,000 residents and Yolo County has over 220,000 residents.

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for immediate release 4/27, 2:08PM

Serving the City of Davis Natural Resources Commission and Paying Homage to the Original Peoples of This Land

or

Abramson Accepts Seat on City of Davis Natural Resources Commission

I am very excited to be joining the Natural Resources Commission and to have the opportunity to work with the other commissioners, City Council & Staff, the community in Davis and Yolo County, and indigenous peoples to move towards a healthy future with clean air, clean water, healthy soil, food security, renewable infrastructure, resilience in a changing climate, and a transition to economies that protect our most sacred resources and sustain life.

I thank the City City Council for putting their faith in me as a commissioner. As I expressed in the commissioner selection City Council meeting on 2/25/20, my consideration and selection for this commission should represent a commitment by our City Council to work to implement a rapid transition towards a healthy future and to meet this crucial moment.

The time to act is now and we are moving far too slowly. How we should proceed is not entirely obvious, but I have faith that through working together we can come into the right relation with the lands that we call home for the next generations of life to come.

As I accept this call to duty and service to my community, I would like to honor the Patwin people who stewarded these lands before being violently removed and subjected to disease and genocide by our cultural predecessors right here in the place we now call Davis.

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