3 New Coronavirus Cases in Sonoma County, 8 Recovered

Share with Friends

On a week that saw the number of Sonoma County coronavirus cases rise more rapidly than before, three new cases were reported on Friday. But with three additional local patients now recovered from the virus, the number of active cases remained at 41, unchanged from Thursday.

All of this comes as the county and regional healthcare providers are planning for extra capacity to accommodate a possible surge of new coronavirus patients in the weeks ahead. This is happening all across the state of California, where Governor Gavin Newsom says the state may need 50 thousand additional beds to handle the onrush of patients in the coming weeks.

Already Sonoma County and local governments across California are identifying and securing public structures, like auditoriums, gyms, college dorms and hotel rooms in which to house non-critical and non-infectious patients to allow hospitals to deal with an expected rapid increase in coronavirus admissions.

The hospital ship Mercy, with 1 thousand beds, arrived at the Port of Los Angeles today, part of a scramble by the state and federal government to add capacity across the state. Already 2 new field hospitals have arrived in the state, and 6 others are on order from the federal government.

Although California has so far escaped the exponential increase in patients that New York state has seen, the governor as well as state and regional officials are planning for a worst case scenerio, as it will be weeks before it’s known for certain if California’s early shelter-in-place order was enough to blunt the curve of new coronavirus infections across the state.