Dec. 14 stay home order expected
The county’s death count has now reached 44
SANTA CRUZ >> Though nearby counties elected to enter Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Regional Stay At Home Order before their ICU capacity dropped below 15%, Santa Cruz County is still considering whether to implement order restrictions early, the county’s spokesman said Monday.
At this time, nothing has been decided, spokesman Ja son Hoppin said. In the interim, the county is sticking with a loose date of one week from today.
“Our projec ted date to hit the trigger is Monday, Dec. 14 ( but that could change),” he said. The order, which Newsom announced during a press conference Dec. 3, requires those areas with limited ICU capacity levels to temporarily shut down for three weeks — temporarily closing all sectors that are not considered critical infrastructure or retail. The order does not wear off until the area has a projected capacity of at least or more than 15% ICU capacity.
This is the strictest mandate that the state has seen since COVID-19 arrived. It is different than the first shelter-in-place order in that it breaks the state into five regions — with Santa Cruz County in the Bay Area region. Though hospitalizations related to the virus have grown 72% and there’s been a 69% increase in ICU admissions during the last two weeks according to slides Newsom presented Monday morning, the Bay Area region still has a remaining 25.7% of its capacity to serve those ill with COVID-19.
At this time, the San Joaquin Valley and South
ern California regions are two of the five total regions that have been forced into the order. However, on Friday, five Bay Area counties and the city of Berkeley announced that they were going to opt in to the order early. In all areas, the order took effect Sunday. Just one day prior, Hoppin said that the county’s ICU capacity was at 48.6%. With 18 of 37 ICU beds occupied, just nine individuals in those beds were COVID-19 patients.
“I’d caution people from focusing on the county numbers,” he said then. “Santa Cruz County is just a drop in a much larger pool.”
C ou nt y c oronav i r u s dashboard hospitalization projection data showed Monday morning that hos
pitalizations had climbed in the last week of November, as was projected by the model. The model continues to predict growth in December.
Nurbers tresd u6
By Monday morning, the county dashboard showed a total of 44 deaths due to COVID-19. Seven of those deaths were reported over the weekend, Hoppin said.
The 38th fatality was a white man in his early 90s who had multiple significant factors to his COVID-19 case when he died Nov. 22, though that was the underlying cause of death. He was a resident of Santa Cruz Post Acute.
The 39th fatality was a woman in her early 70s who also had multiple significant factors in terms of her health; COVID-19 was the underlying condition. She was a resident of Pacific Coast Manor; no race was
shown on her death certificate, Hoppin said.
The 40th fatality was a white woman in her mid90s who had one significant factor that aided in her passing. She was a resident of Pacific Coast Manor.
Hoppin had preliminary information on the 41st, 42nd, 43rd and 44th death in the county — who died on Nov. 30, Nov. 19, Dec. 3 and Oct. 19, respectively — as their death certificates had just been entered into the dashboard mid-morning. All the deceased were women, with the 41st, 42nd and 43rd being white and the 44th being Hispanic. All had at least one significant factor on top of their COVID-19 cases.
The 41st and 43rd fatalities were residents of Pacific Coast Manor, while the 42nd was a resident of Santa Cruz Post Acute. The last death, a female who the county was just noti
fied had died out of county two months ago, was not in a skilled nursing or residential care facility.
Though those 65 and older make up the smallest number of case counts in Santa Cruz County, they account for nearly all of the deaths reported with COVID-19 being the underlying cause. The most vulnerable are dying in the county’s nursing homes; of the 44 verified fatalities, Sentinel records tie at least 29 to skilled nursing and residential care facility outbreaks.
Data from the California Department of Social Services shows no active outbreaks at residential care facilities. Previously, Maple House II in Live Oak and Westwind Memory Care in Santa Cruz recorded at least one case.
Outbreaks previously recorded at skilled nursing facilities Driftwood Healthcare Center and Hearts &
Hands Post Acute Care and Rehab Center in Santa Cruz as well as Watsonville Nursing Center and Watsonville Post Acute Center have all been stabilized. The licensing agency for the facilities, the California Department of Public Health, showed no current cases.
However, Pacific Coast Manor in Capitola, Santa Cruz Post Acute in Santa Cruz and Valley Convalescent Hospital in Watsonville all still showed active cases reported in the category of residents; none of the facilities reported ill staff members at this time. Pacific Coast Manor recorded 44 active resident cases and 15 active staff cases on its COVID-19 update page; in total, seven people have died as a result of the outbreak. CDPH data indicates Santa Cruz Post Acute has 11 active resident cases; 14 people have died as a result of the outbreak.