We’ll soon understand coronavirus illness by neighborhood, Stanislaus leaders promise
Stanislaus County’s plan to begin publicly sharing coronavirus information based on ZIP code, and also broken down by race, is welcome news, if a little late in coming.
County leaders had not announced this as of Monday morning, but confirmed their intent to release more helpful numbers when asked for purposes of this editorial.
Two responses: Thank you, and it’s about time.
Reporting COVID-19 cases and deaths by ZIP code, as urged in an editorial last week, should be standard practice by now. To our north, San Joaquin County came around with such detail, and to our south, Merced County now is sharing numbers in some unincorporated towns.
More than 3,200 ZIP codes across the United States were surveyed for a report in Sunday’s USA Today. Asking for such neighborhood data — in addition to citywide numbers or by county supervisorial district, as Stanislaus so far has done — is neither unreasonable nor unusual.
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.
San Joaquin’s breakdowns by both ZIP code and race are no doubt appreciated by its residents. It’s curious that San Joaquin chooses to provide those helpful data sets, but offers very little on its hospitals’ capacity to withstand a COVID-19 surge.
Stanislaus provides far more surge capacity data (real-time availability of hospital and ICU beds, plus ventilator counts) but nothing on race or neighborhood. Stanislaus’ reporting may become the gold standard when those categories finally are added.
That will happen “this week,” Stanislaus CEO Jody Hayes said in a text response. “This information will expand as our numbers grow and we have more data to report,” he added.
Numbers are likely to shed light on the role that poverty plays in this pandemic. Similar reporting in places like Los Angeles, Chicago and New York show that the virus is much harder on low-income communities and people of color. For example, “In the poorest neighborhoods, where median household income is less than $35,000, the COVID-19 infection rate was twice as high as in the nation’s wealthiest ZIP codes with income more than $75,000,” said the USA Today report.
The same might be expected here. But we won’t know for sure until we see the numbers.
The Modesto Bee continues to call for full local accounting on the coronavirus, including breakdowns by ZIP code, race, and age data more specific than by decade.
Unveiling numbers by ZIP code will provide 28 reports in Stanislaus County rather than the current 14 — a welcome addition, when it comes. The extra context is expected in a county professing transparency.