COVID-19 Travel Warning, Battling Misinformation, RivCo Numbers

RIVERSIDE COUNTY, CA — With the Labor Day holiday weekend ahead, some Riverside County residents — vaccinated or not — may be wondering whether it's safe to travel amid a COVID-19 uptick.

“First and foremost, if you are unvaccinated, we would recommend not traveling,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Tuesday during a White House press briefing.

"We have actually articulated that people who are fully vaccinated and who are wearing masks can travel," Walensky said. "Although given where we are with disease transmission right now, we would say that people need to take ... these risks into their own consideration as they think about traveling."

Read the CDC's latest guidance on domestic travel and international travel.

Amid an uptick in COVID-19 cases across Southern California and the country, some local leaders are concerned that large swaths of the region's population will not take the travel and other CDC guidance seriously, which could lead to higher numbers of virus-related hospitalizations and an increasing burden on health care workers .

Tuesday night, a divided San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted to adopt what is believed to be a first-in-the-nation policy of declaring COVID-19 misinformation a public health crisis and adopt a series of recommendations to actively combat it.

"Combating health misinformation needs to start on the ground, in counties and cities across our nation," said Board Chairman Nathan Fletcher, who authored the policy. "San Diego County took the first step by becoming the first local jurisdiction in the country to align its policies with the U.S. surgeon general's recommendations to fight health misinformation. Health misinformation is a national crisis and it requires all of us to fight against it together."

Tuesday night's vote was 3-2, with Supervisors Jim Desmond and Joel Anderson voting no. The final result came after hours of debate featuring testimony from hundreds of residents, many who opposed the measure.

"Misinformation is a poison to our communities," Amber Ter- Vrugt, Scripps Health senior director of government relations, told the San Diego County Board of Supervisors.

Ter-Vrugt said Scripps has experienced staff shortages and that some patients have delayed critical health care needs due to the latest rise in cases.

"Even some patients admitted continue to push back against recommendations. We have the responsibility to address this misinformation," she said.

Sharp HealthCare Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Brett McClain said, "We need to promote the facts, and the facts are that this current surge is a surge of the unvaccinated."

Click here to read what the resolution attempts to accomplish in San Diego County.

The Riverside County Board of Supervisors has not discussed a similar resolution, but the board is sometimes divided on the issue of COVID-19. Supervisor Jeff Hewitt has often criticized health mandates and data about vaccine safety and efficacy. He has also refused to mask up during the board meetings.

Riverside County continues to see a rise in COVID-19 spread. On Wednesday, 1,022 new cases were reported, bringing the total number recorded since the pandemic began in March 2020 to 337,075, according to Riverside University Health System data.

The number of COVID-19 hospitalizations stood at 669 Wednesday, with 146 of those patients in intensive care units. On Tuesday, 664 hospitalizations were reported; ICU admissions were unchanged, according to the RUHS data.

Seven additional COVID-19 deaths were reported Wednesday, bringing the total number of Riverside County residents lost to COVID since early 2020 to 4,738.

As of Wednesday, 53.8 percent of county residents 12 and older were fully vaccinated, according to RUHS.

—City News Service contributed to this report.