Despite a recent surge in COVID-19 cases, Del Norte County’s public health officer added his name to a letter sent to state officials asking for a slight relaxation of safety measures — particularly indoor dining.

“We thought it was a bit of an overreach in terms of the impact on the surrounding counties in Northern California,” Dr. Warren Rehwaldt told county supervisors on Tuesday, adding that the letter was sent in response to statewide restrictions last week. “We’re not sure we’ll hear about anything soon, whether they’ll consider doing this.”

Rehwaldt called the recent surge in local cases, and others in the region, aren’t unexpected.

With 11 active cases in Del Norte County currently, about a third of them are related to travel and others being contacts of family members who were positive for the novel coronavirus, Rehwaldt said.

“I think it really is a big surge — it’s definitely more than we’ve seen for the previous month or so,” he said, adding that these predictions are based on data projections conducted dating back to June. “I think we’ll probably see more of this as time goes on. We expect to see more cases, probably more cases in the hospital in the next few weeks.”

Despite the recent increase in positive cases, none are associated with the inmate population at Pelican Bay State Prison, Rehwaldt said. Nearly all of the prisoners tested negative for COVID-19. Roughly 35 to 45 inmates refused to test, he said.

Among Pelican Bay staff, however, the lengthy turnaround time between testing and receiving results has been disappointing, Rehwaldt said.

“This company hasn’t met the standard they expected,” he said. “I sort of expected the second round with prison staff would go better and seems to have gotten worse in terms of turnaround time.”
More testing of prison staff is expected, however, he told supervisors.

A single new confirmed COVID-19 case was identified on Monday, though that person’s test results came in after he or she completed their quarantine period, according to the county’s COVID-19 Information Hub.

That case brought the total number of confirmed cases in Del Norte to 100. About 53 percent are contacts of previously-known cases, 8 percent of the positives were acquired through travel and 37 percent became infected with the novel coronavirus through community transmission, according to the Public Health Branch.
Rehwaldt also told supervisors that the Public Health Branch is considering a different provider to test the Crescent City area’s wastewater for evidence of disease.

According to a July 31 Biobot report, a sampling from July 26 showed evidence consistent with 400 COVID-19 cases in the wastewater. This was a slight increase from a July 12 sampling, which showed evidence consistent with 370 cases in the city’s wastewater.

Rehwaldt said the way the reports are spaced out doesn’t help public health officials. Wastewater sampling for COVID-19 is conducted either a couple times per week or even daily in other places, he said.

“It’s good for us to know when disease activity was really slow, essentially zero,” he said. “There may be a pattern where an increase in the Biobot report suggests that we’ll maybe see an increase in clinical case reporting within a week or two, but it’s harder to use that if we’re not doing it as frequently.”

Documents

• July 26 Biobot Report

• July 12 Biobot Report

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