Solano County won't voluntarily opt-in to new COVID-19 restrictions
County health officials say hospital ICU capacity well-above restriction threshold.
(Graphic by Solano News Update)
Solano County health officials have chosen not to voluntarily implement additional stay-at-home restrictions under a new state order that takes effect on Saturday.
The decision was announced after five neighboring counties and the City of Berkeley said it would voluntarily adopt the new restrictions even though the Bay Area region’s hospital intensive care unit capacity did not yet meet the state-required threshold for implementing them.
On Tuesday, state health officials announced a new stay-at-home order that imposed tougher restrictions on residents and businesses where hospital intensive care unit space was constrained. The move came after most counties in California reported a sharp increase in infections of the novel coronavirus COVID-19, concerning health officials about whether regional hospitals had the resources and intensive care space to respond to an increase in positive cases.
Under a previously-used color-coded “tier” system, state officials ordered counties to impose restrictions based on county-level infection date. That system and its restrictions are still in place.
Under the new system, state health officials are collecting hospital intensive care capacity through a new system that collates California’s 58 counties into five regions. Solano County is listed in the “Bay Area” region along with Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Monterey, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and Sonoma counties.
Though the stay-at-home order takes effect on Saturday, restrictions under the order are only imposed once a region has an average hospital intensive care unit capacity of 15 percent or less. Four of the five regions surveyed are expected to meet this threshold this weekend, state health officials projected on Thursday, and would be forced to implement the new restrictions.
The Bay Area region, which includes Solano County, was not expected to meet the threshold until the middle or end of December, officials said.
On Friday, several counties in the Bay Area region — Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Santa Clara and San Francisco — along with the City of Berkeley said they would voluntarily adopt the new restrictions anyway, even though the region’s hospital intensive care unit capacity was above the threshold required to implement them. Health officials in those areas said the move was done out an abundance of caution.
“We cannot wait until after we have driven off the cliff to pull the emergency brake,” Dr. Sara Cody, the county health officer in Santa Clara, told KCBS Radio. “We understand that the closures under the state’s order will have a profound impact on our local businesses. However, if we act quickly, we can both save lives and reduce the amount of time these restrictions have to stay in place, allowing businesses and activities to re-open sooner.”
Under the new restrictions, residents are encouraged to remain at home as often as possible, but are permitted to travel for essential purposes like doctor’s visits, picking up food, grocery shopping and going to work. Office-based businesses are required to offer options for remote working, with limited exceptions.
Retailers are allowed to operate with indoor services, but must reduce their capacity to no more than 20 percent and prohibit customers from eating or drinking while they shop. Other businesses, like hair salons, barbershops, nail salons, wineries and bars, must close completely.
On Friday, Solano County health officials said the new restrictions place an unnecessary hardship on businesses that are already struggling in the region, drawing on data that showed localized hospital intensive care unit capacity was 35 percent above the state’s threshold.
“Evidence shows businesses are not where the major spread of COVID-19 takes place,” a county health official wrote in a statement. “The primary contributor of spread is personal behavior and people gathering with others outside of the household without following safety measures, like masking and physical distancing.”
The county’s position continues a trend of resistance to new COVID-19 related restrictions: Earlier this year, Solano was the last Bay Area county to implement a stay-at-home order, with the proclamation coming weeks after nearby counties voluntarily implemented similar restrictions. State officials rolled out a broad stay-at-home order a short time later.
Last month, the county’s top law enforcement agency said it would not commit officers to responding to violations under a state-wide stay-at-home order that banned non-essential gathering and travel between the hours of 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. Police departments in Vallejo and Vacaville followed suit with a similar pledge while still encouraging residents to follow state public health orders; Fairfield and Benicia said officers would be dispatched to stay-at-home violations only in extreme circumstances.
Solano County grabbed international headlines in February when the first positive COVID-19 case in the United States was diagnosed at North Bay’s VacaValley Hospital in Vacaville. In October, county health officials confirmed the region’s first co-infection of COVID-19 and influenza.
Several public employees have also tested positive for COVID-19 in recent weeks, including two firefighters in Rio Vista, a fire department employee in Dixon and a police officer in Benicia.
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