How California’s Mariposa County prepared for coronavirus

Dr. Eric Serginko was already in his office early last Tuesday when his cell phone came under pressure from the message he was expecting and scaring him.

A 23-year-old woman in Mariposa County – a low-density mountainous area Serginko works as a health official – has been confirmed to have COVID-19. It was 7:13 am, which is the time that Serginko’s memory was burned the way others determine the birth of a child or the initial tremors of an earthquake.

More than 53,000 California residents have tested positive for the new coronavirus, but in Mariposa County, Tuesday’s result was the first.

Although the case indicates the arrival of a deadly deadly nurse, it also allowed Serginko to launch a communication tracking system that he had been working on for weeks, which is one of the final panels for a well-built response platform that was built months ago.

“I love the idea of ​​zero,” said Serginko, hours after the province lost its perfect record, the first COVID-19 patient in isolation at home. “But I also love one idea because I really think it’s true that what you were planning has really worked out.”

Hailey Polland, 20, a certified assistant nurse at John C. Fremont Hospital, was scanned for a COVID-19 test in a gym at Mariposa School.

(Gennaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

If the rapid and deadly spread of the epidemic across the United States revealed the government’s inefficiency and unwillingness in other societies, then the Small Human and Health Services Agency of Mariposa provided a written example of how to deal with the crisis. The boycott’s first confirmed injury comes at a time of growing protests over staying orders and demands from other rural California districts state governor Gavin Newsom is reopening the state.

The Mariposa County Health Agency began tracking the virus in December, before many in the country knew it was present. By mid-January, nearly a week before the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the U.S., there was a district-wide response plan.

And when Gavin State Governor Newsom announced in mid-March that all California residents were required to stay in their homes as much as possible, the Mariposa County Sheriff’s Office, using the lessons learned during the Detwiler fire that ravaged the region nearly three years ago, immediately alerted the adult county residents They numbered 18,000, spread over 1,400 square miles, to respond to the order.

Joy Shultz, a store owner in the Sierra Mercantile in Mariposa, said she tried to remain optimistic as the coronavirus was closed in the state.

(Gennaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“Within two hours, there was no one in the city,” said Joe Schultz, a shop owner in the historic center of Mariposa.

Much of the credit for this goes to Serginko, the 56-year-old former Navy captain who regularly switches to his previous epidemiology job at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta by running seven miles from home to work. Like the special version of Mariposa County from a leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fossey, he was waving the horizon due to local fighting against the spread of coronaviruses.

“We were ready for this,” said Shivon Kothari, director of the district Health and Human Services Agency. “We worked together as a team during the previous disasters, so we actually had some of this planning process. But in addition, we had the luxury of time not having cases early. So we had the ability to plan.”

Serginko said he first read COVID-19 on New Year’s Eve, when an international organization monitoring infectious diseases sent an email alert about a strange virus that appeared in Wuhan, China.

While others ignored the warning, Serginko alerted Kothari, and after two weeks they informed the district’s supervisors of what could be a danger to a community seeing 4.5 million visitors pass each year, most of them on their way to Yosemite National Park, 31 miles to the east.

A single character makes her way through closed shops along Highway 140 in the heart of Mariposa.

(Gennaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Most storefronts in Mariposa have been closed since the order to stay at home took effect.

(Gennaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“The important thing was early recognition.” Serginko said: “We were already leaning forward and saying, ‘Well, what do we need as a boycott to prepare?’

I threw a bunch of ideas, and people said, “Let’s run with this. “

Mariposa is one of the smallest counties in California, and it is also one of the oldest counties, dating back to 1847 when John C. Fremont’s agent, who would become one of the first senators in California, mistakenly purchased the abandoned Rancho Las Mariposas, then part Mexico.

A year later, when gold was discovered in northern California, Mariposa became the southern end of the mother flower and opened.

The city has maintained this pioneering feeling, with the 140th highway dividing downtown looking like a Western movie set over a central commercial district. Some local politicians still wear cowboy hats and bilateral ties, but tourism, not gold, is driving the economy now.

This was closed when Yosemite was closed due to the epidemic in mid-March.

“I love the idea of ​​zero. But I also love one idea because I really think that validating what you were planning.”

Dr. Eric Serginko, Mariposa County Health Officer

Mariposa County Health Officer Erik Serginko, left, and Health Services Director Shivon Kothari are standing in front of a white board that lists the statistics of COVID-19 – with only one case in Mariposa at the time.

(Gennaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s a ghost town,” said Joan Gamble, behind the counter in the Sierra Mercantile, where masks are on sale along with Yosemite hats and the little sculpted black bears. “The garden closed, the shops closed. Everything. It is just something we felt we had to do.”

Serginko thanks for that too. Social selling has not been difficult in a county where the minimum parcel size in rural areas is 5 acres, but it has also earned people the need to wear face caps and wash their hands frequently.

So when it came to closing businesses and schools, most people were already on the plane.

“They are very tangled [that] The business community, Travis Medlock, who runs Ramen from a closed 1950s restaurant, said they don’t want to open early. “While companies don’t like them, they fully understand.

“They are very concerned about opening the park again. This will only bring the Bay Area, Valley, Los Angeles to here. We have been secured securely.” [but] Once they open the gates there, we are concerned that they will open the gates here. “

Travis Medlock, owner of Little Shop of Ramen, looks at a row of empty seats inside his restaurant along Highway 140 in Mariposa.

(Gennaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Medlock said the county had regained its back in other ways as well, so it sent office staff to eat fast food to help its small restaurant stay afloat.

Serginko, whose strange and slightly cheerful character is as infectious as the coronavirus that fights him, loves to point to protective bubbles. A bubble can cover one person or an entire community, but if anything breaks through that bubble, it breaks and leaves everyone inside exposed.

The powerful Mariposa bubble was evident from the fact that it is surrounded on all sides by counties with over 200 cases and half a dozen deaths.

Minutes after this bubble burst at the end on Tuesday morning, Serginko moved to repair the hole, and sent a tracing team that included two health professionals and an honest investigator as well as a monitoring officer and investigator at the district attorney’s office.

Bill Evans, a 72-year-old retired computer programmer who has lived in Mariposa since 2004, walks home along Highway 140.

(Gennaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Calvin Kimpro and his nephew Caden go to a pizza at one of the few fast food restaurants along Highway 140 in Mariposa.

(Gennaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

They began searching for anyone who might have been in contact with a Mariposa resident who had been afflicted in a hospital in neighboring Madeira County after traveling internationally.

“We really realized early on that we need to build a team that goes beyond what we have in public health to do,” said Kothari, on traceability, a key tool to stop the spread of communicable diseases. “Who are the best people who used to investigate? Even DA officers, all investigators have been trained to track contact very early.

“Now a lot of provinces are simulating this, a lot of provinces are withdrawing their law enforcement partners to help with that. They are really good at tracking contact.”

Within hours, 25 people were identified. When half of those tests were positive for the next three days, the Serginko team had already put them in quarantine, protecting the rest of society and checking its plan.

“We know where everyone is,” said Serginko, who now has 13 confirmed cases in his province: “We have eliminated the transport bud.” The team was ready for that. The team went up and did what they had to do. “

With COVID-19 now in the community, Mariposa County supports other defensive measures. On Thursday, it opened a test center in a middle school gymnasium with the goal of administering 132 free exams a day, roughly five times the recommended number for a population of 18,000.

A woman looks at the second story of the Mariposa Hotel Inn along Highway 140.

(Gennaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Another precaution requires county staff to enter vital information such as body temperature and other symptoms into the phone app every morning, giving the health department more data points to track. Kothari hopes that all district companies will use the app when they raise their stay at home.

When that happens, and the main roads of Mariposa again become blocked with vacationers heading to Yosemite or weekend visitors at the scene, this will be the next test of the protective bubble designed by Kothari and Serginko.

Their team is working on a plan for that as well.

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