CALIFORNIA’S CORONAVIRUS PROVING GROUND: IS IT SAFE?
Kings County, with one of state’s highest rates per capita of infection, receives OK to reopen; officials confident the disease won’t escalate
HANFORD >> There was a huge outbreak this month at the local meat-packing plant in the Central Valley community of Hanford, home to miles of sprawling dairies and cattle farms. The number of coronavirus cases has continued to surge over the past week, and COVID-19 patients at the county’s hospitals have been climbing all month long. Does Kings County sound like the kind of place that’s ready to reopen for business? That’s exactly what happened last week when the state surprised even locals by giving its blessing to move ahead with easing Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home restrictions, although Kings County is on the wrong side of the state’s latest benchmarks for reopening. Now, this tiny county, population 150,000 and with 488 recorded cases, has become an unlikely testing ground as California tries to unshackle its economy. What does it take to be safe to reopen? County Supervisor Doug Verboon insists local businesses won’t be recklessly opening their doors. But even he was surprised by the state’s decision. “It caught us off-guard,” said Verboon, a fourth generation farmer who led the effort to petition the state for a variance to reopen despite Kings
County’s rising coronavirus numbers. “We didn’t think we’d ever meet the criteria, but the state kept moving guidelines, so we’re real happy.” The coronavirus shutdowns have crippled the local economy, shuttering the civic auditorium and teen center in Hanford and mom-and-pop shops such as the Court barbershop and From Head to Toe salon, even as essential businesses such as processing plants and prisons have continued to operate. The marquee outside the downtown Fox Theatre still says: “A Very Long Intermission.” But the coronavirus outbreak at one of the county’s main employers, the Central Valley Meat Co., put tiny Kings County in the state’s Top 5 when it comes to confirmed COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents. Just days before Newsom announced revised rules, Kings County officials had voted to usher in the next phase of reopening and allow retail shops and dine-in restaurants to resume service. They petitioned Sacramento to grant their county an exception. They argued that 42% of their 399 cases at the time were linked to the meat processing plant, which a Trump administration order to maintain food supply prevented them from shutting down. It was unfair, they maintained, to punish other local businesses and stir-crazy residents in a community working aggressively to contain the virus. State Public Health officials on Friday didn’t respond to repeated questions from the Bay Area News Group to explain why they granted Kings an exemption. The governor has spent weeks explaining a complicated formula of measuring new cases, testing capacity, deaths, hospitalizations and other thresholds counties must meet to gradually eliminate shelter-inplace restrictions. Paperwork that Kings County filed with the state said the county was within the goalposts from May 1319 for the one area it was struggling to meet: A testing positivity rate less than 8%. By Friday, it was above the mark again. Health experts questioned the reasoning behind Kings County’s waiver. Dr. Arthur Reingold, an epidemiologist at UC Berkeley, said that just because most of a community’s cases are tied to specific clusters doesn’t mean it’s any safer to reopen. After all, the infections get into places like food plants, nursing homes and prisons from the outside community, and those workers go home every night and can potentially spread the virus. “These facilities where people congregate are flashpoints, but that doesn’t mean that infections are limited to those facilities,” Reingold said. “So I’m not sure the standard would be different from one community or another.” The debate illustrates how difficult it has become for public health officials and local leaders to weigh and communicate the risks in places as different as Kings County, population 155,000, and Los Angeles County, population 10 million. Neither county cleared the state’s benchmarks to reopen. But L.A.’S death rate per 100,000 residents is 19 times higher than Kings, which recorded only its second death May 17. Kings County isn’t alone in losing patience with Newsom’s pace for lifting lockdowns: Sutter, Yuba, Modoc and neighboring Tulare counties all have insisted the state fails to take into account local circumstances that show they can keep a lid on the contagion despite rising case counts. “The problem we were having here is the business owners were all mad at us because they felt we were forcing them not to open,” Verboon said. “But that wasn’t us, that was the state.” To Verboon and others, the county was a victim of its own success. It aggressively tested for the virus to contain the outbreak at the meat plant and that testing spiked its infection rate to among the worst in the state, they say. Just 46 of its cases are listed as randomly “community acquired,” and 124 of the infected have recovered. “Where testing is focused on a single hot spot of known cases, the data is going to be skewed such that it does not accurately reflect the prevalence of the virus in the general population,” Verboon wrote in the petition to the state. That may be, but the situation in Kings County is a stark contrast to the Bay Area, where infection rates have been stable or falling, but local officials have been more cautious about reopening, allowing only takeout dining and curbside pickup retail. In the Bay Area’s more populous counties, only increased testing capacity is needed to meet the state’s latest threshold. In contrast, the trends appear more dire in Kings County, a Bay Area News Group analysis shows. On Thursday, the county recorded 41 new coronavirus cases — its biggest spike since May 1 and secondhighest number since the pandemic began. And the number of COVID-19 hospital patients has continued to climb all month, reaching 26 confirmed and suspected patients as of Wednesday. If Alameda County, with the Bay Area’s highest number of cases, had seen infections at the same rate as Kings County, it would have twice the number it has — about 5,000, rather than just more than 2,500. There’s no question Kings County is aggressively battling the virus. A new coronavirus testing site that opened earlier this month has greatly expanded capacity, and local officials have focused efforts on the 900 employees at the Central Valley Meat Co. Brian Coelho, president of the family-owned company, would not respond to questions about the outbreak. County health officials were not available, but as Verboon tells it, the contagion came to the plant through an employee who also worked at Visalia’s Redwood Springs skilled nursing facility in hard-hit neighboring Tulare County. That county had one of the state’s worst nursing home outbreaks. Other workers had been infected through close household contacts. “We were lucky to get it under control as fast as we did,” Verboon said. Even with meatpacking plants becoming COVID-19 hot spots across the country, Hanford Mayor John Draxler said it’s important for Central Valley Meat stay open as long as it’s safe. The plant is a major local employer and the financial repercussions of a shutdown, not only for plant workers but for dairy farmers like Draxler used to be, would be horrific, he said. Draxler said that while safety precautions seemed subpar at first, things have improved. Workers, some in bloodspattered glasses and boots, toting lunch coolers, were hesitant to speak to a reporter as they headed for their cars after a shift on Wednesday. One who wouldn’t give his name said managers have spaced workers farther apart and told them not to talk to each other in an effort to stop the virus from spreading. Workers were given masks, he said, and breaks had been staggered to avoid congregating. The man said he’d contracted the virus, suffering from fevers and headaches, but recovered and returned to work. Even now, he said, he felt safe at work and praised the plant for providing him six years of steady work. The company offers full health benefits, a 401(k) retirement plan, paid vacation and sick leave. In neighboring Tulare County, where many of the meat plant’s workers live, a divided county board voted to follow Kings County and allow retail and restaurant reopening, but as of Friday, it had not received the state’s permission. Not only does Tulare have the secondhighest death rate — more than 15 per 100,000 residents — in California, since May 15, it has recorded 20 coronavirus deaths, including 10 in a single day. Supervisor Dennis Townsend said that like their neighbors, Tulare County’s spike in cases are largely from outbreaks at state-managed skilled nursing facilities and a fruit canning plant and because of aggressive testing in an attempt to contain them. Not everyone in Tulare was comfortable with its move to allow businesses to reopen despite not meeting the state’s benchmarks. One Tulare County health department worker, who was not authorized to speak to news reporters and asked not to be identified, found the vote to allow reopening a troubling move that seemed to put politics over public health. “I don’t see any indication we’ll see a slowdown any time soon,” the employee said. “Our administration is just shrugging their shoulders about it. It’s not pretty.” Whether residents in the two counties are confident enough of their safety to return in great numbers to malls and restaurants remains to be seen. Managers at the Hanford Mall recently opened the doors to shoppers, with signs at the entrance urging people to stay 6 feet apart and stalls and sinks in restrooms strategically blocked off to prevent people from getting too close to each other. Some stores remained closed. A whiteboard outside Big Kahuna Frozen Yogurt still displayed a St. Patrick’s Day message scrawled in green marker. But Dolores Banuelos decided to open her shop, Cupcake Route. She has a new plastic sheet between workers and customers. A makeshift home delivery operation helped her get by, but funds were tight. “It’s not about profit,” Banuelos said. “Just surviving.”