Fresno county, city officials get list of challenges in first joint meeting since pandemic
With social and economic issues haunting local residents, elected officials from Fresno County the City of Fresno met Tuesday for a joint meeting to discuss each agency’s response to the most obvious concern these days: the coronavirus pandemic.
The meeting comes months into the pandemic and is the first of its kind. It gathered county supervisors and councilmembers to hear from health officials and administrators on the latest in the coronavirus pandemic as well as spending that is aimed in response. Combined, the two governments have about $200 million in federal aid that could be spent on addressing economic and social impacts from the virus.
No immediate action was taken.
Each government body has previously provided economic relief to businesses hurt by the state’s shutdowns meant to keep residents from congregating. Other costs have included retrofitting county and city spaces in order to abide by new ways during the pandemic, like distancing and avoiding close contact.
The city and county have also grappled with significant loss in revenue, although the funding issued by the federal government is not meant to alleviate lost revenue.
The meeting came one day after California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced additional funding and medical support, known as “strike teams,” for the Central Valley region. Some counties in the region, now considered a hot spot for coronavirus, have COVID-19 infection rates higher than the state’s average.
Fresno County officials are still awaiting clearer information from the state about how the additional help will be laid out.
Addressing local needs
Much of the problem with coronavirus infection still lies in places considered “problem sites,” which Fresno County Interim Health Officer Dr. Rais Vohra said are the jail, shelters, nursing homes and essential worksites.
“The virus is able to spread very quickly and many times very silently when you have those settings,” he told the panel of elected officials Tuesday morning inside the Fresno County Plaza Building.
When the governor made his announcement of additional aid Monday, he focused on essential workers and Latinos as a group in the state which has seen greater impact from the coronavirus. Tuesday, officials pressed Vohra on whether farmworkers and those at meat plants and packing houses are getting proper testing and health access.
Hundreds of positive COVID-19 cases have been reported from meat plants in the Valley, but health officials suggested Tuesday that getting timely or useful information from large employers hasn’t been easy. Coupled with that are the challenges that some residents face of not being able to properly isolate once infected.
Fresno County Health Director Dr. Dave Pomaville said often it is difficult to reach farmworkers for contact tracing efforts and when the workers are interviewed by health investigators it isn’t always clear who employs the worker.
As part of the county’s spending plan with federal aid, community-based organizations are being called in to deploy into rural and diverse communities in order to conduct tracing and get information out to residents. Pomaville said that work is imminent. He said getting community organizations out in the community presents a friendlier face for residents.
“There is a significant amount of fear that is out there and concern about reporting information to the department,” Pomaville said. “Information gaps are very difficult at this point.”
Agricultural and large packing plant employers have also been recommended to establish workplace safety standards, like screening workers before they are allowed to work.
Vohra also said the health department has partnered with smaller, rural community clinics in order to teach them how to contact trace since they know their residents better than the county health workers.
Fresno County Chief Administrative Officer Jean Rousseau said the county may have a hard time stretching the funding currently available for pandemic response. He would like to see the county spend cautiously. During the meeting, he laid out once again the county’s preliminary spending plan, which includes $10 million for medical investigators and contact tracing. The cost of operating alternative care sites is $11 million, according to the administrator’s report.
‘A disaster’
Vohra in the past has said that operating care sites outside of hospitals represents a failure by the community at large to follow health guidelines to prevent the spread of the virus. He said that is a problem because the region faces a shortage of doctors and hospital beds.
Responding to a question from Fresno County Board of Supervisors Chairman Buddy Mendes, Vohra agreed that “unregulated social behavior” has contributed to the spread.
As of Tuesday, 13,209 people in the county have become infected with coronavirus, according to county health information. From those, 3,314 have recovered and 112 have died. In total, 112,528 people have been tested.
Vohra said the regional efforts earlier this summer to reopen businesses also hurt the progress of health officials. Fresno County and several other counties in the central San Joaquin Valley asked state officials to ease requirements in May and June so the region could move to the next phase of recovery and reopening from the coronavirus pandemic.
The process, called an “attestation,” opened up more businesses in Fresno County despite the coronavirus infection rates being higher than the state had deemed safe. Along with an increase of the public returning to social gatherings, opening businesses caused the relatively flat curve in new infections to suddenly spike up, according to Vohra.
“The attestation allowed businesses and many sectors to open up,” he said. “In July that bend upward became a surge and in many ways has become a disaster.”
Trust issues from community
In many ways, getting a grasp on the spread of coronavirus in the state and in the country represents an issue of trust in the community, according to Sonja Diaz, founding director of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative at UCLA.
Diaz said Tuesday that government is at fault for the lack of trust among working-class communities and immigrant workers since the federal government has signaled cutbacks in helpful benefits for immigrant families, like food stamps and healthcare.
She said that the government’s exclusion of non-legal residents in coronavirus relief has added to the distrust and the hesitance from residents to even report their infection or needs out of fear.
“In order for Latino workers and immigrant workers to feel comfortable being tested, there needs to be clarity … that they will not be adversely affected,” Diaz said.
Under the CARES Act, the government’s rollout of $1,200 in stimulus checks left out workers with no Social Security number and those from mixed-status families. Similar provisions are expected to be included in future aid packages. Diaz argues that if public health administrators want to ensure that there is a “full faith effort” to deal with the pandemic, governments must recognize disparities among diverse communities.
However, she fears much time has been lost.
“We’re so many months into the pandemic,” Diaz said. “There has already been unnecessary loss of life.”
