New Coronavirus Case Prompts County Emergency. Healdsburg School Closed for Cleaning.

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In the wake of a second suspected local case of the novel coronavirus, Sonoma County officials took aggressive action Monday to head off the further spread of the virus across the North Bay region.

The county’s Department of Health Services declared a Local Public Health Emergency on Monday, allowing it to coordinate more closely with state and federal agencies including the CDC. The county will also be working with local hospitals and health care providers to screen possible patients, and coordinating through the Sonoma County Office of Emergency Management.

All of this comes as the county is expecting to receive testing kits this week that will allow it to more easily and quickly screen patients. Officials nationwide and in Sonoma County are preparing for an expected surge in cases, if community spread of the virus becomes more common in the coming weeks.

The latest case was detected in an individual who recently returned from a Mexican cruise and had developed symptoms that were consistent with the virus. The state’s test came back positive and that result is now being double checked, as per protocol, with the federal Centers for Disease Control.

The individual in question had been back in Sonoma County for ten days before being diagnosed. Now county officials are actively tracing all people who may have been exposed during that time, and the patient is being treated in isolation at a Sonoma County hospital. County health officials have declined to itentify which hospitals are treating the local patients.

In another development, a person who had cared for that new suspected coronavirus patient reportedly visited a Healdsburg private school for an evening program. As a result officials at The Healdsburg School, an independent K-8 school, have closed its doors to its approximately 200 students until cleaning can be completed.

Meantime, county officials say the health emergency was declared out of an abundance of caution, and will allow the county to more efficiently and quickly gear up for any surge of coronavirus cases that may come.