Alarming COVID-19 surge in Tahoe linked to tourists; El Dorado County calls emergency meeting

The El Dorado County Board of Supervisors will hold an emergency meeting Thursday to confront a troubling surge in coronavirus cases in the Tahoe region that officials have linked to businesses and tourists not following mask and social-distancing recommendations.

The alarm comes after a spike in new COVID-19 cases after the three-day July 4 holiday weekend that puts Lake Tahoe at the epicenter for the coronavirus in El Dorado County.

Of the county’s 262 cases, 130 are on the county’s side of the lake, which includes the region’s most populated city of South Lake Tahoe, data show. Another 69 cases have been reported in the less populated Placer County side of the lake.

The dramatic increases in confirmed cases in Lake Tahoe have been linked primarily to large family get-togethers and to visitors “not taking proper precautions,” said Carla Hass, an El Dorado County spokeswoman.

The county won’t know for a couple of weeks whether the large crowds from the holidays will cause an even greater spike, due to the lag time in people catching the disease and when they develop symptoms.

“This weekend, the holiday weekend demonstrated that there are a lot of people following the rules, but there are a lot of people who are not,” Hass said. “When we see the cases going up, there aren’t many options for us in order to maintain the level of safety for our residents and our visitors and to make sure that our healthcare system isn’t overwhelmed in Tahoe.”

Nonetheless, Hass said county health officials aren’t yet ready to return to the days earlier in the pandemic when tourism officials took the unprecedented step of urging tourists to stay away. However, El Dorado County officials fear it’s only a matter of time before the state orders lockdowns back in place if the COVID-19 trends continue.

The county has fared comparatively well to this point in the pandemic. It remains the most populous county in the state with no confirmed COVID-19 fatalities and, as of Monday, reporting just two hospitalized cases. More than 190,000 people live in El Dorado.

To stay open, wear a mask

Hass said it’s going to be up to businesses to enforce mask-wearing and orders to keep people 6-feet apart.

“The businesses — if they want to remain open — they need to … take the action that they can to ensure their patrons and employees don’t transmit or acquire the virus,” she said. “The best way to do that is require the face mask and follow the state mandate.”

Placer County and tourism officials distributed face masks and cleaning supplies to tourists over the weekend, but many locals complained that the crowds paid little heed to public health orders.

Placer County supervisor Cindy Gustafson told her fellow board members Tuesday that some locals were so upset they urged officials to close state freeways and highways to keep people away, though the county has no authority to do so.

“People wanted me to be able to shut it down because the visitation numbers are skyrocketing,” Gustafson said.

At Tuesday’s meeting, the county’s health officer, Dr. Aimee Sisson, warned supervisors the county is almost certainly going to end up on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s watchlist in the coming days, a move that would mean restaurants would have to shut back down.

Health officials in Yolo and Sutter counties made similar announcements to their respective boards on Tuesday.

The news came amid a surge of new cases throughout the greater Sacramento region and growing fears that local hospitals could soon be inundated with more patients than they can handle.

To prevent lockdown orders returning to El Dorado County, it’s going to be imperative for everyone to follow the public health rules, said Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority chairman Jerry Bindel, manager of Forest Suites Resort at Heavenly Village in South Lake Tahoe.

“We want to stay open,” Bindel said. “We want to be available for visitors to come up, and the only way we’re going to be able to do that is to have cooperation.”

This story was originally published July 7, 2020 at 3:02 PM.