Coronavirus is ravaging Kern County in the hard-hit Central Valley. But local leaders say there is confusion over public health measures.
As of Sunday, Kern County had confirmed 26,570 cases and 204 deaths.for extra resources to battle the virus, including so-called “strike teams” and the allocation of some $52 million to improve testing, tracing and isolation protocols.
But navigating the state’s numerous agencies has been a quagmire, said Constantine, the public health director.Farmworkers Alma Guedea, left, and Armando Bravo pack up freshly harvested grapes on Thursday in Delano, Calif. “We know there’s a lot going on with the state. We hope there’s a time coming soon where we can coordinate and help the community stay safe, but that hasn’t happened,” he said. In early July, Constantine received an email from the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency saying a “multi-agency state enforcement strike team” would be visiting Kern County businesses to help improve compliance with health orders and to work with the county to “use enforcement to address employers who are refusing to comply with safe reopening guidelines.” The email, which was shared with The Times, instructs county officials to contact the state’s Department of Industrial Relations to report specific businesses that needed to be investigated. Constantine received a separate email from the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services with contacts for multiple agencies as well as a “centralized email address” for counties onto request help dealing with specific sectors or businesses. Another email about on-site enforcement came from the state health department. The Kern County health department has received hundreds of complaints about businesses violating health orders, Constantine said. Since April 6, the county has sent 539 first-warning letters to businesses and 120 second warnings. It has reported 37 businesses that refuse to comply to the state strike team since July, he said.“We don’t know,” Constantine said. “That’s the coordination that we need.” Ferguson, the spokesman for the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, told The Times that questions about county-specific enforcement actions should be sent to strike team agencies directly. The state’s department of public health referred The Times back to Cal OES. The state’s Labor and Workforce Development Agency and its Department of Industrial Relations did not respond to queries about what happened to the Kern County complaints. Asked about county leaders’ frustration over having to deal with multiple agencies, Ferguson said: “That sounds like a coordination issue rather than an L.A. Times story.”Ferguson said enforcement of health orders is best done at the local level by health departments and law enforcement agencies. The state, he said, coordinates with local jurisdictions when there is a “gap or lack of resources” and in dealing with serial offenders. Since early July, when the strike teams were formed, the state has made 991,696 contacts with businesses across California via in-person visits, phone calls and emails and undertaken 1,128 enforcement actions, he added. Law enforcement officials in Kern County said they are encouraging voluntary compliance and education rather than enforcing state orders. “There are definitely questions on who’s enforcing what. I think that’s across the board, regardless of what county you’re in,” said Sgt. Robert Pair, a spokesman for the Bakersfield Police Department. Pair said he thought the state had “taken the lead in enforcement.” He knew of one case, early in the pandemic, in which the county health department asked Bakersfield police to deal with a gym that refused to close. Nurse Debyron Pearson explains how to collect a sample at the COVID-19 testing site at the Kern County Fairgrounds in Bakersfield. Sheriff Youngblood said it made no sense to him to crack down on businesses and unmasked people while the state is releasing thousands of inmates,In mid-May, Youngblood posted a video to his Facebook page in which he stood in uniform in front of his Texas longhorn bull, Buford, and said his deputies patrolling the streets did not seem to be getting infected.immunity may be the secret to this,” Youngblood said. The camera zoomed in on Buford. The sheriff added: “And that’s no bull.” Critics of aggressive stay-at-home orders have called for herd immunity, the idea being that eventually a sufficient percentage of the population will have survived COVID-19 and become immune, in turn protecting the rest of the uninfected population by interrupting the spread of the virus. But herd immunity would lead toYoungblood told The Times he stands by the video, and “I have my beliefs, but I’m just a tap-dancing monkey with a badge on and not an expert.” In another video just before Memorial Day, the sheriff said that although businesses were starting to reopen, it “doesn’t mean the virus is gone.” People still needed to socially distance and wash their hands “because we don’t want to go backward.” Jay Tamsi, president of the Kern County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said businesses are trying their best to keep up with city, county and state guidelines and rules, but “it’s a lot to take in.” On top of the governor’s guidelines, restaurants have to apply for separate city and county permits to sell food outside, even while indoor dining is prohibited, Tamsi said. In recent days, he said, several businesses that belong to the Hispanic Chamber were warned or cited for not having proper permits — even though they enforced social distancing, mask-wearing and other safety requirements just to stay open. He added that the state’s requirement that barbershops, nail salons and restaurants operate outdoors is brutal in the Central Valley, where temperaturesLate last month, the Delano-based California Farmworker Foundation, working with the county and Good Samaritan Hospital, started providing mobile COVID-19 testing to farmworkers at their worksites in the fields.Hernan Hernandez, director of the California Farmworker Foundation Farmworker Javier Salazar, right, enjoys menudo and warm tortillas with coworkers in a field during a lunch break from harvesting grapes on Thursday in Delano, Calif. It’s being done, in part, to cut through the confusion of setting up a test, which includes navigating government websites in English and having reliable internet and an email address, said Hernan Hernandez, director of the California Farmworker Foundation. For people who lack legal immigration status, it can feel like too big a risk to give personal information to the state, he said.Hernandez and county officials said community spread, especially in multifamily housing and at family gatherings, has been a major problem. After the economy largely reopened around Memorial Day, Hernandez started once again seeing quinceañeras, baptisms and family dinners in farmworker communities, even as people tried to be careful at work. “The Latino culture, we operate as a collective,” Hernandez said. “We see a lot of community activity. We love to celebrate with bands, and it got to the point where people were putting bands in living rooms, trying to be subtle. But you look outside and see a lot of cars.” Hernandez said that while “we’re finally seeing that coordination” with local and state officials and community organizations, the state should have focused on the Central Valley much sooner because of its demographics and poverty levels. “They could have seen this coming,” Hernandez said. “We knew this valley was going to be a hot spot. We need a lot of resources. We need a lot of education. We’re that vulnerable population that needed attention.”
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