ABSTRACT
CONTEXT: In March, 2020, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causal agent of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), was spreading in the Bay Area, especially in Santa Clara County, causing increases in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. PROGRAM: The Association of Bay Area Health Officials (ABAHO) represents 13 Bay Area health jurisdictions. IMPLEMENTATION: On March 15, 2020, the local health officers of 7 ABAHO members (counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara and the city of Berkeley) decided to issue legal orders on March 16 for 6.7 million residents to shelter in place to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the causal agent of COVID-19. The Bay Area was the first region in the United States to shelter in place, and within days, other regions in the United States followed. EVALUATION: Subsequent comparative analyses have confirmed that acting early in issuing shelter-in-place orders prevented a large number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the Bay Area throughout the United States. The quality of a decision-in this case, for crisis decision making-cannot be judged by the outcome. A good decision can have a bad outcome, and a bad decision can have a good outcome. The quality of a decision depends only on the quality of the decision-making process at the time the decision was made. DISCUSSION: In this Field Report, we review how we made this collective decision. With the benefit of hindsight and reflection, we recount our story through the lens of public health legal authority, meta-leadership, and decision intelligence. Our purpose is to improve the crisis decision-making skills of public health officials by improving how we make high-stakes decisions each day in our continuing fight to contain the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, to save lives, and to eliminate COVID-19 racial/ethnic inequities.
Subject(s)
COVID-19/prevention & control , Guidelines as Topic , Pandemics/legislation & jurisprudence , Pandemics/prevention & control , Politics , Public Health/legislation & jurisprudence , Public Health/standards , Adult , Aged , Aged, 80 and over , California/epidemiology , Decision Making , Female , Humans , Leadership , Male , Middle Aged , New York/epidemiology , Pandemics/statistics & numerical data , SARS-CoV-2 , United States/epidemiologyABSTRACT
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has spread globally, with >365,000 cases in California as of 17 July 2020. We investigated the genomic epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in Northern California from late January to mid-March 2020, using samples from 36 patients spanning nine counties and the Grand Princess cruise ship. Phylogenetic analyses revealed the cryptic introduction of at least seven different SARS-CoV-2 lineages into California, including epidemic WA1 strains associated with Washington state, with lack of a predominant lineage and limited transmission among communities. Lineages associated with outbreak clusters in two counties were defined by a single base substitution in the viral genome. These findings support contact tracing, social distancing, and travel restrictions to contain the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in California and other states.