Hearst Castle COVID outbreak hits tour guides, ticket takers
Hearst Castle tour guides and ticket takers must wear face masks for the next week or so due to a recent coronavirus outbreak at the recently reopened state park.
Members in both those work groups reported enough confirmed cases of COVID-19 that the California State Parks district that oversees the Castle had to report the outbreaks to the state, according to Dan Falat, superintendent of the San Luis Obispo Coast District.
The former San Simeon estate of media mogul William Randolph Hearst reopened to the public on May 11 after being closed more than two years due to the coronavirus pandemic and repairs to the access road between the Castle visitor center and the hilltop compound.
Between that date and May 27, when the most recent reporting period ended, 22 COVID-19 cases were reported throughout the district, Falat said, 12 involving the guide section and seven in the ticket office.
He confirmed May 31 that the district had hit the threshold for reporting an outbreak to the Division of Occupatonal Safety and Health of California (Cal/OSHA).
That trigger point for reporting and starting protective actions, Falat said, is having three cases within a single unit of people who work together and share spaces, such as the ticket booth area or the guide trailer.
Falat said he wasn’t personally aware that any of the sick Castle staffers required hospital admittance, although the employees are not required to report that to the district.
According to Falat, most of those staff members tested positive for COVID-19 soon after the Castle reopened.
While individual coronavirus cases had been reported in the San Luis Obispo Coast District’s other work groups, Falat said, none of those sections had reached the three-case threshold. He estimated the district has about 500 employees and oversees another 500 volunteers.
Before masking and other requirements can be lifted within individual work groups, he said, “We have to have had zero reports of cases within a 14-day period.”
COVID-19 protocols at Hearst Castle
According to Falat, as soon as the number of COVID-19 cases involving Hearst Castle staffers reached the threshold for reporting, management “took all the necessary precautions” designed to stem the outbreaks, as required by the state.
Those measures include requiring employees within affected units to cover their faces when indoors or situations where they can’t follow social distancing guidelines.
The district must also require weekly rapid-antigen tests for every employee in those units, provide protective personal equipment such as masks and hand sanitizer and maintain multiple hand-sanitizing stations.
Employees should be encouraged to create much social distancing as possible outside and in, Falat added.
In addition, the district must immediately send home anybody who tests positive for COVID-19, then require them to quarantine and not return to work until their symptoms subside and subsequent tests for the virus come back negative.
Some of those measures have been in place since the pandemic began.
“We encourage everybody to wear masks if they so choose, regardless of their vaccination status,” Falat said. “We trust the process and follow the protocols to the letter of the law.”
Confidentiality laws have made it tricky to keep other employees fully informed, Falat said, “but the goal is to make sure people are notified as required.”
Notifying guests who may have taken tours with guides who later tested positive for COVID-19 has been close to impossible so far, he said, because case-tracing protocols don’t cover those situations.
Falat’s office accumulates case information throughout the week, tracks the employees who’ve indicated that they’re sick, and reports confirmed COVID-19 cases to the state each Monday.
The pandemic “is a moving target,” Falat said. “We’ll get reports from employees who say they feel ill, but then they never test positive for the virus.”
In addition to the required actions, “we look at whatever alternatives there are, other things we can do to make sure that we reduce the cases and reduce the risk,” the superintendent said. “Then we do those things, too.”
Falat said June 3 that no new coronavirus cases had been reported to him within the past week.
