Officials in Ventura County, California will be expanding coronavirus testing, tracking the infected and those who they’ve been in contact with, and moving people out of their homes and into specialized housing for COVID-19 patients.
Discussing the need to hire contact tracers and manage active cases, Ventura County Public Health Director Dr. Robert Levin said during a May 4 press conference that people who live in homes where they could expose family members to COVID-19 would be moved into ‘other kinds of housing’ provided by the county.
“We also realize that as we find more contacts, some of the people we find are going to have trouble being isolated,” said Levin. “For instance, if they live in a home where there is only one bathroom and there are three or four other people living there, and those people don’t have COVID infection, we’re not going to be able to keep the person in that home.
Every person who we’re isolating, for instance, needs to have their own bathroom. And so we’ll be moving people like this into other kinds of housing that we have available.”
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The county walked back Levin’s comments on Facebook, responding that they “are not going to remove anyone from their home,” but that “If someone cannot isolate at their home because of their living situation we have alternative options available.”
Another Facebook user responded, “they can try — they will have a fight on their hands.”
Ventura county has had 595 COVID-19 cases, of which 416 have recovered, 22 are hospitalized, 11 of which are in the ICU, and 19 have died. Most cases are in those aged 45-64, while no data was provided on average age of death.