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- Written by: Lake County News reports
On May 4, the sheriff’s office received testing results that confirmed that one inmate had tested positive after a specimen was collected on April 19, as Lake County News has reported.
It was Lake County’s eighth confirmed case of COVID-19.
The inmate was isolated and has since been tested again, on May 4 and 6. Lt. Corey Paulich said the results of those two latest tests were negative and the inmate is now considered recovered.
Paulich said that, since May 4, the sheriff’s office has been working cooperatively with Lake County Public Health to conduct contact tracing to identify staff and inmates who had close contact with the COVID-19 positive inmate.
Twenty inmates who had close contact have been tested and all had negative results, Paulich said.
“We continue to test jail staff and results that have been received so far have been negative,” Paulich said.
Paulich said that, at this time, it appears the positive case was an isolated one and did not lead to an outbreak or additional cases.
On March 12, the sheriff's office instituted and continues enhanced measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus in the jail.
Those measures include suspending jail programs and visitation, screening all staff prior to entry to the facility, placing inmates who are in custody for minor offenses on home detention, enhanced medical screening at booking, wearing of face masks by staff, designating bed spaces for isolation and quarantine, and comprehensive regular cleaning and disinfecting.
“We believe this played a significant role in the prevention of additional cases,” said Paulich.
Paulich said the sheriff’s office is working with the jail’s medical provider and Lake County Public Health to develop a plan for ongoing surveillance testing of staff and inmates. Any inmate with relevant symptomology will be tested and isolated until results are received.
He said the sheriff’s office also will be working with the medical provider and Public Health to remove the affected inmates from medical isolation per Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations based on “symptom-based strategy.”
To learn more about all the steps being taken to keep everyone in our custody safe and healthy, visit www.lakesheriff.com and explore the Coronavirus 2019 response plan.
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- Written by: Lake County News reports
They offer their time, talents, and experience to the benefit of our communities.
For 57 years, Older Americans Month has been a special time to recognize these contributions.
Led by the Administration for Community Living each May, Older Americans Month highlights ways to help older Americans stay healthy and independent.
This year’s Older Americans Month theme, “Make Your Mark,” highlights older adults’ unique and lasting contributions to their communities.
Towards this goal, Community Care Management’s aging services programs help 286 older adults in Lake and Mendocino counties each month to thrive at their highest level of independence.
What’s more, nine of the agency’s 14 Multipurpose Senior Services and Senior Information & Assistance Program staff members coordinating these services are over the age of 60 themselves.
Older Americans Month Program Director Corinne Jones’ path to serving our community’s older adults is featured in the current edition of her alma mater USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology’s Vitality Magazine.
Community Care continues to make its mark on the lives of older adults, both as employer and service provider.
To learn more about available services, contact Senior Information & Assistance Monday through Friday at 707-468-5132, or visit www.SeniorResourceDirectory.org .
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- Written by: DENNIS FORDHAM
Certain urgent estate planning issues have arisen during the present COVID-19 health crisis.
These issues concern getting diagnosed by a physician, intubation and the use of Internet-based communication – such as Skype and Zoom – instead of in-person meetings.
Let’s discuss how they affect your power of attorney, advance health care directive and living trust.
If you are incapacitated, who will pay your bills and sign contracts on your behalf?
A broadly drafted power of attorney allows your agent to make decisions regarding your financial, legal and property affairs (excluding the trust) on your behalf.
Oftentimes, powers of attorney are drafted to become effective upon incapacity. Determining such incapacity usually involves one or more physician certificates of incapacity. This means an in person physician’s visit.
Nowadays, with social distancing, such consultations are difficult to arrange. Accordingly, if your power of attorney is effective upon incapacity you may wish to make it effective immediately (i.e., upon signing).
Similarly, with one’s living trust, transfer of control from an incapacitated settlor to the designated successor trustee often requires attaching one or more certificates of incapacity to an affidavit of successor trustee.
Appointing someone as a current co-trustee (now) and authorizing each co-trustee to act independently (without the other co-trustee’s involvement) avoids the certificate of incapacity.
Financial assets (other than retirement accounts) are oftentimes better managed inside of a trust; financial institutions are often wary of accepting powers of attorney.
You may consider either transferring bank accounts into your trust – and so avoid any problems with the bank not accepting the power of attorney – or request and complete the bank’s own in-house (propriety) power of attorney form.
With social distancing, the use of the Internet-based communication platforms, such as Zoom and Skype, is the new normal. You may wish to authorize third parties to accept the use of such internet based communications with any agent and/or trustee representing your interests. This would assist urgent health care decisions being made given that the agent is not able to be present to sign documents at the hospital.
Thus, a written, signed and dated authorization by you allowing third parties (hospitals, doctors, banks, etc.) to communicate and accept instructions from your agents by means of Skype and Zoom and, importantly, your agreeing to hold harmless from any liability such third parties, might enable your agents being able to act on your behalf over the Internet.
Existing advance health care directives do not contemplate COVID-19. That is, health care directives may expressly prohibit the use of any artificial means to keep you alive. That might prevent your being intubated – placed on a ventilator – even though that would help you to recover from a severe respiratory illness.
Accordingly, you may want to sign a new advanced health care directive, or at least to sign a written statement, that authorizes intubation in the case of severe respiratory illness; you may also consider placing a time limit on intubation.
Also, you may want to authorize the use of experimental drugs that might assist in the treatment of COVID-19.
Anyone wishing guidance to address any of the issues discussed above should consult an attorney. Attorneys are assisting clients over the phone and Internet.
Dennis A. Fordham, attorney, is a State Bar-Certified Specialist in estate planning, probate and trust law. His office is at 870 S. Main St., Lakeport, Calif. He can be reached at
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- Written by: Preston Dyches
What astronomy highlights can you see in the sky in May 2020? Venus, Sirius and the Milky Way.
Many of us are staying home these days, and it's normal to feel kind of cooped up, yearning for wide-open spaces and more distant horizons.
If you find yourself feeling like that, this might be a good time to remember that we're IN space, cruising through the solar system on our pale blue dot, with a vast, three-dimensional universe all around us. And we have an outstanding view!
Now, we often tend to look at the sky as a curved dome above our heads - a sort of real-life version of a planetarium dome, covered in a carpet of stars. But remember, in reality, it's anything but flat. The night sky is the deepest, most open expanse of space you could possibly look into.
Here's a look at what you're seeing when gazing at the sky in May: Looking toward the west in the hour after sunset, here are the bright objects you'll most likely be able to see.
The closest of these objects is the planet Venus in our own solar system, at about 35 million miles from Earth. The next closest is the star Sirius. It's the brightest star in our sky, and also one of the most nearby, at about 9 light-years away.
Several other bright stars in the May early evening sky are a couple, to a few dozen, light-years away. Much farther out is the red giant star that forms the shoulder of Orion, Betelgeuse, at around 500 light-years from Earth.
And although you might not be able to see it, the faint band of the outer Milky Way stretches across the sky here. So when you're looking westward in May's early evening sky, think about how you're looking outward through the disk of our galaxy, toward its outer edges, thousands of light-years away.
You'll get a different perspective looking into the sky in the hour before sunrise. Facing south, the nearest objects are the Moon, at about 240,000 miles away, then Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, at hundreds of millions of miles.
The rapidly rotating star Altair and the star Fomalhaut, with its debris disk and orbiting planet, lie much farther away, at 17 and 25 light-years from Earth.
And the May morning sky also has its own very distant red giant star: Antares, at 554 light-years away.
And finally, across the background, visible under very dark skies is the Milky Way. Here, you're looking into the center of the Milky Way galaxy – densely packed with stars and a supermassive black hole, some 27,000 light-years from Earth.
The night sky that begins right above your own roof is really the shore of a deep cosmic ocean. Here's hoping this brings some comfort if you feel like you need a little space.
Preston Dyches works for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.