Dr. Matt Willis, Marin County public well being officer, and infectious illness specialist Dr. Shilpa Marwaha hearken to questions from the viewers relayed by Mary Jane Burke, Marin County superintendent of faculties, throughout a group discussion board to deal with points referring to COVID-19 in San Rafael on March 9, 2020. (Alan Dep/Marin Impartial Journal)
One thing was odd on the public assembly convened by the Marin County Workplace of Training on March 9, 2020. The chairs for attendees had been spaced an ominous 6 toes aside.
On the assembly, Dr. Matt Willis, Marin County’s public well being officer, introduced that if a case of coronavirus had been to happen in a college, it will be closed for 14 days.
“That is probably one thing that will probably be a part of our response as a group for the subsequent couple months,” Willis stated on the time.
Trying again right this moment, 4 years after COVID-19 was declared a nationwide emergency and a world pandemic by the World Well being Group, Willis stated, “What I didn’t acknowledge and none of us did was how lengthy the pandemic would final. At that time, we weren’t conscious that the virus would proceed to evolve in ways in which would evade our immune programs.”
“The pandemic has clearly impacted everybody and prompted a whole lot of grief and loss for everybody in numerous methods,” Willis stated. “That being stated, it might have been loads worse, really.”
So far, there have been 359 deaths in Marin County resulting from COVID-19, and the illness has despatched 3,605 Marin residents to the hospital. California, nonetheless, had twice the variety of deaths per 100,000 residents, and the nation as a complete had 2.5 instances the variety of deaths per 100,000.
Over the past 4 years, greater than 908,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been given to Marin’s populace of about 260,000 residents. Ninety-one % of the county’s residents have acquired their major sequence of COVID-19 vaccinations, in comparison with 72.9% statewide, and 31% of Marin residents are updated with their vaccinations, in contrast with 13.9% statewide.
In actual fact, Willis himself grew to become the thirty ninth particular person in Marin to change into contaminated with COVID-19. He believes he caught the virus when Bay Space public well being officers met in San Jose on March 15, 2020, to resolve to difficulty a regional stay-home order. This was earlier than vaccines or any therapies grew to become accessible.
“I had by no means been extra sick in my life,” stated Willis. “I had pneumonia and was laid out for nearly three weeks.”
Willis stated COVID-19 has resulted in a number of adjustments which have strengthened Marin County’s public well being system and made it higher ready for the subsequent main outbreak or medical problem.
To start with, the pandemic has resulted within the county receiving about $1.1 million yearly in extra state and federal funding for public well being.
“A part of the lesson discovered nationally,” Willis stated, “was that public well being as a sector had been under-resourced traditionally.”
The county now has an outbreak prevention and an infection management staff that focuses on outbreaks in nursing properties and residential care facilities. The staff carried out 81 web site visits in 2023.
“We now have everlasting ongoing funding for a employees of nurses to be liaisons with these services,” Willis stated.
Early on within the pandemic, among the highest mortality charges occurred in nursing properties. Dr. Elizabeth Lowe, who was MarinHealth Medical Heart’s director of major care on the time, was one of many first to acknowledge the necessity for extra testing of Marin nursing residence residents.
“I principally took over a van that we had been utilizing for affected person transport, put provides from the COVID clinic we had opened up lately within the van and began driving to the services,” Lowe recalled.
Later she would obtain funding from the Marin Healthcare District and assemble a staff that included six faculty volunteers.
“Day by day was a brand new day on the improv, since you by no means knew what you had been doing,” Lowe stated. “You simply tried to do the subsequent smartest thing.”
Lowe stated the expertise resulted in a brand new stage of cooperation amongst MarinHealth, its competitor, Kaiser Permanente, and the county public well being workplace.
Willis stated the pandemic has additionally led his workplace to develop extra exterior partnerships.
Each public faculty in Marin now has sure members of the employees designated to function liaisons with public well being officers and meet frequently with them.
As well as, Marin County is working with community-based organizations, faith-based organizations and colleges in Marin Metropolis, San Rafael’s Canal neighborhood, Novato and western Marin on an ongoing foundation to deal with COVID-19 and different well being threats equivalent to opioids.
Two points in these areas with low-income, minority populations sparked the initiative. Early within the pandemic, an infection charges within the Canal neighborhood had been disproportionately excessive due to the shortcoming of the predominantly low-income Latino inhabitants to overlook work and entry vaccinations. As well as, vaccination charges in Marin Metropolis remained low even after group vaccinations had been supplied.
Willis stated the county fashioned community-based response groups to deal with each of those points, however maybe might have achieved so earlier.
The county has additionally pioneered the evaluation of wastewater as a method of recognizing the emergence of latest viruses in the neighborhood.
“That wasn’t anyplace on our radar display earlier than the pandemic,” Willis stated.
Willis famous that greater than a century handed between the 1918 flu pandemic and COVID-19. He stated that due to numerous components, together with worldwide journey and world provide networks, the subsequent pandemic will probably happen sooner.
Willis stated public well being funding and infrastructure supplied in the course of the pandemic is nearing a funding cliff because the nation appears to be lapsing right into a “pandemic fatigue.”
“It might go away us extra weak, not simply to a pandemic, however to different threats,” he stated.
