Bay Area health officers declared the region’s stay-at-home order will remain in place through May, but some restrictions will be loosened on unspecified low-risk activities.
A joint statement from health officials in San Mateo, Santa Clara, San Francisco, Marin, Alameda and Contra Costa counties indicated most of the existing mandate will remain in place for the coming month.
Great precautions are still needed in the fight against COVID-19, which poses a significant public health threat despite the progress made in stemming its spread, according to the statement released Monday, April 27.
“As effective as our efforts have been, if we move too fast to ease restrictions, the potential of exponential spread could have grave impacts to health and wellness of our residents as well as the economy,” according to the statement.
The order limiting outdoor activity to essential trips is set to expire Saturday, May 3. And while widespread compliance has helped flatten the curve and prevent medical facilities from growing overwhelmed, the order said more sacrifices are required.
“It is critical that our collective efforts continue so that we do not lose the progress we have achieved together. Hospitalizations have leveled, but more work is needed to safely reopen our communities. Prematurely lifting restrictions could easily lead to a large surge in cases,” according to the order.
The release indicated restrictions on “a small number of lower-risk activities,” could be eased, but no details on the criteria were offered. County Manager Mike Callagy said he expected additional information will be available Wednesday.
Locally, Callagy said he plans for certain county parks to reopen next week. Open spaces were closed following a surge of visitors in the early parts of the shutdown, leading to concerns of virus transmission in dense crowds.
He imagined the parks will be opened in phases and that more will come online if social distancing standards are observed. Safety protocol such as one-way trails will be established and rangers will be on site to assure compliance, Callagy said.
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He said officials “encourage people to recreate during this time of stress and uncertainty.”
There are 1,080 confirmed cases in San Mateo County, with 41 deaths linked to the disease. The county reports 74 patients are hospitalized with the virus, and 26 of those patients are in intensive care beds.
More than 11,600 tests have been conducted, and Callagy said the county has capacity to do more testing — if not for a shortfall of available patients, stringent testing standards and a lack of supplies.
Because testing is limited to those showing two symptoms, Callagy said many do not qualify to get tests. He hoped that criteria would be soon limited to only one symptom.
He also suggested some may be avoiding testing, because receiving a deep nasal swab is unpleasant. But he encouraged those feeling ill to check if they qualify for testing.
The county continues to grapple with a lack of available test kits too, said Callagy, which limits the ability to accommodate demand. Looking ahead, he hoped new testing sites could be opened in northern and southern portions of the county.
Regarding the shortfall of essential equipment, Callagy said the struggle with tracking down personal protective equipment persists. He said some deliveries have been postponed, while other orders are intercepted at the last moment by higher bidders.
“It’s the Wild, Wild West out there,” said Callagy, noting the challenge is not unique to the county and that state and federal officials are also challenged to track down masks, gloves, gowns and other essential supplies.
San Mateo County had previously issued an order allowing people to only do recreation activities within 5 miles of their homes. On Linda Mar Beach in Pacifica, that city’s police officers contacted 853 beachgoers and ordered 535 off the beach after learning they lived more than 5 miles away, police said.
(8) comments
only 1000+ cases in a county close to a million resident....that less than .0001% ....I guess the old saying holds true..Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
I think your math is not correct. Try again. I get 0.16%. However, a more realistic way of looking at the number of coronavirus carries in the adult county population would be about 1to 2 per 100 people. You have the right to the pursuit of happiness; I read a news article that stated you have the right to the pursuit of coronavirus infection!
Be careful, be safe, be patient!
I also made a graph of the number of tests and positives by hand on graph paper, but then the Health Department made that available on smchealth.com. Well, you can take the positives for the last 14 days and multiply them by ten and you will have a good estimate of the number of people wandering around with the virus. The graphs are very good but I would like to see a 21 day moving average or better yet a 21 day weighted moving average to see the trend direction.
Contact tracing is the only way to significantly reduce the number of infections over the near future. Yo
I got booted out. To continue: You, my daughter, and administrators confuse isolation, contact tracing and quarantine. Isolation is the separation of infected persons from those not infected for the period of communicability say (21 days for this coronavirus). Quarantine is the limitation of freedom of apparently well persons or animals who have been exposed to a case of infectious disease. So any person testing positive for the virus would be isolated and close contacts (found by contact tracing) would be quarantined. This process could have been started easily early in March when the communicable disease investigators could have contacted the few cases then. It'been done for a long time with other diseases (tuberculosis, STDs, enteric infections, viral infections, etc. Gov. Newsom rattled them all off a few days ago. They are listed in Title 17 Cal. Health Code. And you don't need thousands of people to do contact tracing. San Mateo County only has between 20 to 30 positives per day and if you don't have enough people hire some more (there are many available).
I am very disappointed in the Health Department because I suggested this process in the middle of March and they blew me off with half truths and half lies. Oh, by the way I
Correction the date should be those before April 7, 2020 are not infectious any more.
When are we going to have testing for the public without restrictions? The pubic has waited long enough and the governor is holding out because they do not have the proper supplies, facilities, and man/women is work. This is a poor situation and not being prepared as they try to say they are. Good Luck until next year.
When are the county administrators going to take more responsibility to run an effective prevention program? Is the Health Department really doing all those tests, or are they done by the State Department of Health, or contracted out? According to this article, county manager Callagy "the county has the capacity to do more testing" but they don't have enough clients. Change the requirements to get a test, instead of needing two symptoms give it to anyone who has an upper respiratory infection with symptoms of sneezing, coughing, fever, sore throat, fatigue, trouble breathing or contact to someone with the coronavirus infection.
Also, the county can do much better with patient isolation, contact tracing and quarantine close contacts.
Doing testing on the public without restrictions is not a good idea for prevention. Even though there have been about 12000 tests and 1080 confirmed cases that is not meaningful. Only the last 21 days are significant because those before 21 days ago, say April 21, 2020 are not infectious any more; only about 364 of those are still infectious: however, you can probably estimate that between 4000 to 10000 people in the county are carrying the virus symptomatically and ??? asymptomatically.
(Check Dr. Scott Morrows predictions/projections). So no sarcastic good luck; like they say create your own good luck. I prefer to say, the time is always right to do the right thing and for the right reason.
It would be great if we could get down to a contact-traceable infected population but there's also the issue of travel. On a daily basis, many essential workers go from one county to another and enough to be concerned about are going between the six bay area counties and those outside. Contact tracing and isolation only make sense if you have a small incidence of reintroduction. If the bay area counties are going want to go forward with contact tracing then sorry to say, there need to be checkpoints and self-quarantine practices for folks coming in. I think the checkpoint + self-quarantine duo will be applied on a state level. California has the agriculture checkpoints that can be repurposed for this and once stood up, I believe we as a state can get a handle on getting the numbers low enough to re-open. One step at a time.
You ask good questions though. I stopped tracking the numbers in a spreadsheet when I realized that they don't reflect reality enough to get any new information out of them.
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