Hospital further limits visitors as COVID cases climb

Adventist Health Sonora announced Tuesday the hospital will further limit visitors to its facilities as community spread of COVID-19 in Tuolumne County approached levels as high as the deadly surge over winter.

Effective Wednesday, no visitors will be allowed for most patients. One visitor at a time will be allowed for pediatric patients, maternity care patients, end-oflife care, and for specific patient planning as scheduled by health care staff.

All visitors must be 18 years or older, wear masks at all times, and be screened for COVID-19 symptoms.

The best way the Mother Lode community can support doctors, nurses, and other frontline medical staff right now is to get vaccinated against COVID-19, Michelle Fuentes, president of Adventist Health Sonora, said Tuesday in a statement announcing the visitor restrictions.

Vaccines against COVID-19 are safe and currently available at no cost to anyone 12 and older for Pfizer and 18 and older for Johnson & Johnson or Moderna, the hospital said in the statement.

Meanwhile, the current pandemic surge continued Tuesday with 34 new COVID-19 cases in Tuolumne County and 23 new cases in Calaveras County.

Two of the 34 new cases in Tuolumne County were vaccinated, one with Pfizer and one with Moderna.

As of Tuesday afternoon, there were 204 active cases in Tuolumne County, with five more unvaccinated individuals being treated at the hospital, for a total of 16 coronavirus cases hospitalized.

All but one of the 16 hospitalized individuals was unvaccinated.

Tuolumne County’s case rate climbed to 48.3 over the previous two weeks, up from 46 on Monday, and 0.5 when California lifted most Covid-related restrictions on June 15.

A map produced by the Associated Press showed Tuolumne County had among the highest rate of new cases per 100,000 people out of California’s 58 counties.

New cases Tuesday in Tuolumne County were identified as four girls and four boys under age 18; five women and four men between 18 and 29; two women and two men in their 30s; one woman and four men in their 40s; one woman and two men in their 50s; one woman and three men in their 60s; and one woman in her 70s.

None of the new cases announced Tuesday in Tuolumne County involved inmates at the Sierra Conservation Center state prison outside Jamestown, where a recent outbreak has infected more than 115 inmates.

The prison’s 116 active inmate cases was by far the most of any of the other 35 lockups overseen by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, followed by Pelican Bay State Prison with 12 active cases.

KQED, an affiliate of National Public Radio, reported on Wednesday that advocates at the Prison Law Office in Berkeley say they were told by CDCR officials the outbreak that began in early July appears to have been caused by an infected employee who spread it to inmates.

Whether the employee was vaccinated and the county in which they reside was not mentioned in the report.

The Prison Law Office, a nonprofit law firm that specializes in the humane treatment of incarcerated people, did not return a request for comment from The Union Democrat on Wednesday.

A CDCR dashboard on Wednesday showed 39% of Sierra Conservation Center’s employees were vaccinated, tied for the sixth-lowest of all CDCR facilities. Ten employees at the prison have tested positive for COVID-19 in the past two weeks, as well as 275 total since the pandemic began.

There are about 900 employees at the prison.

Lt. Ricardo Jauregui said on Wednesday that they couldn’t release how many employees reside in Tuolumne County, though he said for a previous story that he expected most to likely be Tuolumne County residents.

When asked about the KQED report, Jauregui said the prison couldn’t discuss any details surrounding the cause of the recent outbreak because contact tracing was ongoing.

Jauregui also declined to address questions about the number of employees who were vaccinated and referred only to the CDCR dashboard.

No inmates infected in the latest outbreak have been hospitalized. There have also been no inmate deaths at SCC since the pandemic started, out of more than 1,500 cases. About 68% of the 3,318 inmates currently at the prison have been vaccinated.

Calaveras County, where authorities are testing fewer individuals than Tuolumne County, reported 23 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday. Tuolumne County had counted 3,158 community cases and 1,533 inmate cases, while Calaveras had counted 2,344 total cases since the pandemic began.

Asked Tuesday why Calaveras County’s daily case numbers have been lower than Tuolumne County’s, and whether less virus circulating in Calaveras, or fewer people are getting tested, Cori Allen, the Calaveras Health & Human Services Agency director who oversees Calaveras Public Health, responded, “The fact is we do not know why case numbers are different and I am hesitant to speculate on hypotheticals.”

There is no evidence that there is or would be less virus circulating in Calaveras, Allen said. Calaveras follows the state Department of Public Health process of investigating cases. She said she couldn’t speculate whether or not the numbers over the past week in Calaveras have been an accurate representation of the current level of disease transmission.