The recent surge in COVID cases is hitting Sonoma especially hard, experts said last week.

“The highest case rates are actually in Sebastopol and Sonoma,” Sonoma County Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase said. “We have had an increase in cases that is actually above California state.”

While Mase said the community would need to be conscientious of case rates, she added that the heightened numbers in Sonoma Valley — and the Bay Area moreover — were likely due to higher rates of testing, and therefore more reporting of positives.

“State models does predict this wave will increase and peak in mid- to late-May,” Mase said. “If you look at our case rate compared to other Bay Area counties, and there’s 11 Bay Area counties, you would see that Sonoma is right in the middle.”

New subvariants of the COVID-19 continue to emerge globally — the variants BA. 4 and BA. 5 first identified in South Africa are now in the U.S. — but have not yet been detected in Sonoma County.

Countywide, 78.6% of the population is vaccinated including children, which places Sonoma in the top-10 most vaccinated counties in California, Mase said. In addition, COVID deaths per 100,000 in Sonoma County were more than 56% lower than the state average.

With COVID still lingering throughout the community, however, CEO of Sonoma Valley Community Health Center Cheryl Johnson urged the public to pick up free COVID resources from the center.

“We currently have home testing kits available at SVCHC and invite you to pick up a few. If you do not want to use your insurance or pay out of pocket for COVID testing, we are encouraging you to pickup home testing kits,” Johnson said.

President Joe Biden ordered flags be flown at half-staff throughout the country to mark 1,000,000 deaths in America from COVID-19. But as the pandemic phase ends, so do the federal funds for COVID testing and resources.

“Not all COVID activities will continue to be free,” Johnson said. “As we move from the pandemic stage to the endemic stage, federal funding will end and agencies will return to traditional payment sources. This may mean charging health insurance agencies or the patient.”

This comes as Supervisor Susan Gorin’s office has received numerous complaints about the lack of available free testing sites in Sonoma Valley, said Karina Garcia, an aid to Supervisor Gorin. Gorin is focused on creating partnership with the Sonoma County Department of Health Services to increase free testing opportunities.

“I want to thank, once again, our health center for stepping up to the plate and letting people know they have test kits available so people can take the tests at home and get rapid responses,” Gorin said.

Contact Chase Hunter at chase.hunter@sonomanews.com and follow @Chase_HunterB on Twitter.

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