Thursday, May 7, 2020

Indentity and transparency for 95368

On Monday, April 20, 2020, Stanislaus County opened it's first free COVID-19 testing site at the Salida Library. Three days later on April 23, I submitted an email request to the county asking for Salida's COVID-19 cases to be broken out of the county numbers just as Alameda County has done for unincorporated Castro Valley. I copied members of Salida MAC on my request and learned they had also requested the same information. (THANK YOU SALIDA MAC!) 

On Monday, April 27, I sent another e-mail request to the county asking for an update and sending a link to a Sacramento Bee article showing that Sacramento breaks their COVID-19 cases down by zip code.

The Modesto Bee Editorial Board joined the call for the breakdown in numbers by zip code in an opinion piece on April 28, which specifically mentioned Salida
"Reporting by ZIP code would greatly increase clarity, for example, in Salida — the county’s largest unincorporated community, and host of the county’s new drive-up testing clinic. With 14,658 people, Salida actually is larger than three of our cities: Waterford (population 8,823), Hughson (7,370) and Newman (11,119). ZIP code-level reporting would do the trick, as Salida has only one ZIP code."
Unfortunately, the county's solution to our request was to break the numbers out by supervisorial district which doesn't tell anything specifically about Salida. That same day, Salida MAC again made the case for the breakdown of Salida's numbers. 

On May 4, the Modesto Bee Op Ed Board announced that the county would soon break down the numbers by zip code

"Perhaps people in Modesto soon will know whether their neighborhoods have had COVID clusters. It will be nice seeing 10 different reports for the 10 ZIP codes in Modesto, rather than just one for the entire city.  
The same goes for one-ZIP-code Salida. The unincorporated town has 14,658 residents but no clue whether the coronavirus is active there, despite serving as the county’s only testing site before others were added Monday in Patterson and Keyes.  
On Sunday, Merced County became more transparent by reporting to email alert subscribers its cases in Delhi (population 11,735) and Winton (11,761), both unincorporated like Salida although both are smaller. Salida also has more people that three actual Stanislaus cities: Waterford (population 8,823), Hughson (7,370) and Newman (11,119), all of which have benefited from specific coronavirus reports."


FINALLY! Finally...on Thursday, May 7, 2020, eighteen days after placing the first COVID-19 testing site in Salida, Stanislaus County debuted the COVID-19 numbers by zip code. If the first link doesn't work, click this link and then "Neighborhoods" at the top of the page.

District 3 has 20 cases. Salida has 12 of those cases.