U.S. Won’t Send Coronavirus Patients to Southern California
U.S. Won’t Send Coronavirus Patients to Southern California
(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government abandoned plans to send a group of coronavirus patients to a facility in Costa Mesa, California, in the wake of fierce opposition from local communities.
The passengers from the Diamond Princess cruise ship are currently quarantined at a U.S. Air Force base in Northern California. The government sought to move them to the state-owned Fairview Developmental Center, but a federal judge temporarily blocked the plan after the City of Costa Mesa sued.
Now, lawyers for the U.S. government say the issue is moot.
The quarantine period for the passengers is ending and fewer people than expected tested positive for the virus, according to a report filed Friday in federal court in Santa Ana.
“Based on initial estimates from the CDC, it was expected that as many as 50% of the passengers could test positive within the quarantine period; in fact, actual results have been much, much lower,” according to the filing.
Fight Not Over
Costa Mesa Mayor Katrina Foley called the government’s decision a win for the citizens of the city and county, but said the fight isn’t over.
“The government has not promised not to place future infected persons there,” Foley said in a statement on the city’s website. “We will continue to ask the court to prohibit the government from using this completely inappropriate facility for housing people infected with a highly communicable and potentially fatal disease.”
Orange County, where Costa Mesa is located, said in an earlier filing Friday that sending coronavirus patients to the facility could severely damage the local economy of a densely populated county with a vibrant tourism industry, which includes Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm.
The nearby cities of Newport Beach, Huntington Beach and Laguna Beach as well as the Ocean View School District and Orange County Business Council also filed or planned to file court documents supporting Costa Mesa’s lawsuit.
Orange County also argued that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines recommend that people who have tested positive but don’t require hospitalization be isolated at home and not concentrated at one facility.
To contact the reporter on this story: Edvard Pettersson in Los Angeles at epettersson@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider
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