Los Angeles Times

Coronaviru­s now spreading faster in the suburbs

Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties seeing more infections than L.A.

- By Rong-Gong Lin II, Sean Greene, Jake Sheridan and Luke Money

In the first months of the pandemic, Orange County leaders looked at the frightenin­g coronaviru­s outbreaks and rising death toll to the north in Los Angeles County and thought their communitie­s were doing pretty well in comparison.

“Orange County has the lowest rate of confirmed cases in comparison to our neighborin­g counties,” Michelle Steel, chair of the Orange County Board of Supervisor­s,

said on May 21, just two days before the county was cleared by the state to reopen restaurant­s for indoor dining. “Orange County is in good condition.”

But less than two months later, the conditions have changed dramatical­ly. Over the last week, Orange County as well as two other suburban counties to the east of L.A. — Riverside and San Bernardino — are reporting worse coronaviru­s case rates per capita than L.A. County, according to a Times analysis.

The shift is all the more dramatic because Los Angeles County — long the epicenter of the coronaviru­s in California — continues to see huge spikes in cases. On Thursday, it reported more than 4,000 new cases, shattering a one-day record. But

the new surge in COVID-19 has been particular­ly painful for suburban counties that were eager to reopen their economies after months of stay-at-home orders and where political battles raged about whether the government should require residents to wear masks in public settings.

The three counties opened many businesses a week before Los Angeles County. And along with the decisions by all three counties to rescind local maskwearin­g orders, some experts said that sent an unintended message to some residents that they could go back to old routines.

“What it does do is send you a psychologi­cal message to the community: ‘Hey, maybe things are getting better. Maybe I don’t have to worry anymore, or ... I don’t have to be as judicious with my activity and social distancing and masking and hygiene,’” said Dr. Shruti Gohil, associate medical director of epidemiolo­gy and infection prevention at UC Irvine and a professor of infectious diseases.

On July 1, Orange County had the lowest coronaviru­s case rate of the four counties, reporting 165 new cases over the preceding seven days per 100,000 residents. San Bernardino County reported 222; Riverside County, 256; and L.A. County, 281. But by Wednesday, the trio of suburban counties now fared worse: San Bernardino County has 408 new cases over the preceding seven days per 100,000 residents; Orange, 399; Riverside, 391; and Los Angeles, 372.

The community spread has brought other grim consequenc­es. Orange and Riverside counties have seen the numbers of its hospitaliz­ed patients with confirmed coronaviru­s infection nearly triple in the last two months; in San Bernardino County, the number has more than quadrupled.

By contrast, counties that kept mask-wearing orders without interrupti­on reported a smaller increase in hospitaliz­ations. In L.A. County, hospitaliz­ations have increased by 29%; in San Diego County, by 23%.

Health experts are particular­ly concerned about the backlash about wearing masks, which has been especially pronounced in Orange County, where educators proposed a plan to reopen schools without masks or social distancing.

In Huntington Beach on Thursday, as the sun burned down on the shoreline, almost no one on the beach was wearing a mask. Neither were the people walking on the streets outside the restaurant­s, which were open only for outside dining. The beach was full of towels and people, and the ocean was dotted with surfers and swimmers.

Robert Hurtado, 58, sprawled out on the steps by the city’s pier. He had nothing better to do, he said, because everything was closed and he couldn’t find work during the pandemic — a pandemic he doesn’t really believe in.

“It’s a hoax. A lot of these cases are people eating bad seafood and drinking contaminat­ed water,” said the maskless Hurtado, an Orange resident. He did, however, say he believed the virus was bad in “Third World countries. We’re not able to do nothing… I can’t even go the the gymnasium, can’t go to the movie theaters, can’t go to the restaurant­s — they’re playing games.”

Up the road, Lisa Campbell, a 27-year-old Huntington Beach resident, walked out of a restaurant, to-go bag in hand. “I think it’s all bull—,” Campbell said.

In her opinion, the numbers look bad because “everyone is getting tested for coronaviru­s” and “they’re giving a lot of false positives.” She wasn’t wearing a face covering. “Wearing a mask is kind of outrageous to me. Think about all of the other illnesses,” Campbell said.

She worried that her daughter, who will be heading to kindergart­en in the fall, will have to wear a face covering to class. “I’d hate to send my child to school with a mask on her face, and when she’s 18 she’s afraid of society ’cause she has to wear a mask all the time,” Campbell said.

In fact, the coronaviru­s pandemic is the world’s worst public health crisis in more than a century, and the mainstream medical establishm­ent is virtually unanimous in now saying that masks are essential to controllin­g the spread of disease and reopening the economy. The fact that hospitaliz­ations are surging is proof that coronaviru­s disease transmissi­on is worsening, experts say.

“The data is clearly there: that masking works,” Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a webcast with the Journal of the American Medical Assn. on Tuesday. “If we could get everybody to wear a mask right now, I really do think that in the next four, six, eight weeks, we could bring this epidemic under control.”

But mask resistance remains strong. Orange County’s former health officer, who issued a mandatory mask order, resigned after receiving a death threat; it was her replacemen­t who rescinded the order. The rescission was reversed a week later by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who on June 18 issued a statewide mandatory mask order.

In recent weeks, some Orange County elected officials, including Steel, have urged residents to wear masks in public settings, and some people are heeding the advice.

In the face of alarming increases in coronaviru­s cases and hospitaliz­ations statewide, Newsom two weeks ago ordered bars and indoor restaurant dining in most of the state to be shut. This week, he ordered the rest of the state to also close bars and indoor dining rooms. And in the hardest-hit counties that are home to more than 88% of the state’s population, he also ordered the shutdown of businesses such as gyms, malls, nail salons and hair salons.

“With Orange, it’s all about defiance ... defiance about personal protection,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a professor of medicine and an infectious disease specialist at UC San Francisco. “When you look at places that enforce masks, in general, by state, they tend to do better.” A recent study found that mandating face mask use in public is associated with a decline in the daily COVID-19 growth rate, and such mandates may have averted up to 450,000 deaths.

The Orange County executive officer, Frank Kim, said Thursday that he did not think Orange County’s case rate was out of line with its neighbors. “Obviously, there are some days where one county is higher than another, but I did not see us as an outlier within the large urban counties in Southern California,” Kim said.

 ?? Gina Ferazzi Los Angeles Times ?? MICHIGAN tourists go maskless in Palm Springs. Riverside County has seen a rise in COVID-19 cases.
Gina Ferazzi Los Angeles Times MICHIGAN tourists go maskless in Palm Springs. Riverside County has seen a rise in COVID-19 cases.

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