Does your Bay Area county meet Gov. Newsom’s test for reopening? Here’s our analysis of where they stand

Most Bay Area counties are far from meeting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new criteria for reopening many businesses that were forced to close under California’s stay-home order to limit the spread of coronavirus, a Bay Area News Group analysis has found.

In fact, urban counties throughout the state would not meet the new standards, which come amid a growing debate over easing restrictions as the economic toll mounts.

“I think they are somewhat unrealistic for a large urban county,” Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese said. “But perhaps in Colusa or Modoc or someplace more rural they might be more realistic.”

Newsom’s updated California pandemic roadmap to reopening, unveiled this week, allows counties to open offices, dine-in restaurants, shopping malls and outdoor museums if they have no more than one COVID-19 case per 10,000 people and no deaths in the last 14 days.

Counties also must show they are conducting a minimum of 1.5 COVID-19 tests per 1,000 residents and have at least 15 “contact tracers” per 100,000 residents — staff who will track down and notify those who had been in contact with the newly infected.

Looking at 10 Bay Area counties — Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano, Sonoma — none meets all of the criteria, and none has met any of them consistently.

In the last 14 days, only one of the Bay Area counties — Santa Cruz — had no more than one new case per 10,000 residents.

Only two counties had no new deaths in the last 14 days — Santa Cruz and Napa — and most are not close to meeting the standard for 1.5 tests per 1,000 residents.

Most counties still are building toward their contact tracing goals. Alameda County has said it aims to have 300 and Santa Clara County 700 tracers. Given their populations, those goals are within the state standards.

Though most Bay Area counties have more stringent lockdown orders in place through this month, the state criteria for lifting Newsom’s indefinite stay-home order raised questions among local officials.

In Santa Clara County, the most populous in the Bay Area and where the outbreak has been most severe in the region, Supervisor Mike Wasserman was concerned that as counties ramp up to meet the testing criteria, that will make it harder to meet the standard of fewer than one case per 10,000 people over 14 days.

“I didn’t think that condition is appropriate,” Wasserman said. “The concern I had is, our positives will increase with our increase in testing. We expect that. If somebody did no testing, you’d theoretically have no positives.”

Newsom suggested Friday in response to questions that there may be some flexibility, with “variations for some counties that can move a little faster” with the larger counties moving “together.”

“We’re going to go into this not blindly, not in a political mindset, but very judiciously based on health and data,” Newsom said.

A similar analysis by the Los Angeles Times found that statewide, only 24 of California’s 58 counties met the criteria for no deaths and no more than one case per 10,000 people in the last 14 days. With the exception of Santa Cruz County, all are sparsely populated counties north of the Bay Area, the Times found.

Officials in several counties also have pushed back against the statewide lockdown. Yuba and Sutter counties allowed most businesses to reopen this week in defiance of the governor’s order, albeit with social-distancing restrictions, mandatory cleaning protocols and a face-covering rule. Orange County pushed back this week on beach closures.

But Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner said the new criteria angered supervisors throughout Southern California and across the political spectrum, who felt it moved the goal posts from demonstrating adequate hospital surge capacity to handling infection spikes.

“This is not a legitimate metric,” Wagner said. “It’s just not justified by the science. The whole idea of flattening the curve was not about eliminating the disease … it was about managing cases so you didn’t overtax the health care system, and you’re in a better position for helping people survive.”

But in Santa Clara County, supervisors Wasserman and Cortese were optimistic about the county easing restrictions soon.

“I do not think the governor is unreasonably crippling the economy,” Cortese said, predicting Newsom “will bless our less stringent requirements in the future as we find ways in Santa Clara County to open up car dealers, hair dressers, shoe stores and other retail.”

Staff Writer Robert Salonga contributed to this report.

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Author: John Woolfolk, Harriet Blair Rowan

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