Newsom tightens virus vise
New business curbs reverse some Marin openings
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday announced renewed restrictions on California businesses, forcing Marin to close hair salons, offices and indoor mall areas as the county recorded its deadliest day of the pandemic.
Newsom ordered every county in the state to immediately close indoor dining, bars, movie theaters, zoos and museums as California faces a worsening coronavirus outlook.
The 30 counties on the state’s COVID-19 “watch list,” which includes Marin, must also close indoor operations at gyms, nail salons, churches, malls and offices with non-essential workers, Newsom announced.
About 80% of Californians live in those 30 counties, which have been placed on the list due to rising coronavirus infections and hospitalizations.
“We’re moving back into a
modification mode of our original ‘stay-at-home’ order, but doing so utilizing a dimmer switch, not an offon switch,” Newsom said.
Following a continued spike in cases over the weekend — 323,344 people have been infected with COVID-19 in California while the death toll has climbed to 7,040 — the state deemed it necessary to “dim” reopening efforts.
Health officials in Marin reported five new coronavirus-related deaths on Monday — the highest one-day increase yet — bringing the total to 28. The county’s hospitals were treating 26 coronavirus patients on Monday, down from a record high of 35 on July 7.
Marin’s public health officer, Dr. Matt Willis, had not allowed indoor operations to resume for the majority of businesses that Newsom closed Monday. Indoor dining in the county was allowed to resume at the end of June, but the state required Marin to shutter dining rooms again a week later as coronavirus cases surged.
Willis allowed non-essential workers to return to offices in Marin on June 1, and permitted hair salons and barber shops to reopen June 29. Now, those reopenings have been reversed.
“In a way, this is a good thing, because we need to take the necessary precautions from spreading this virus around,” said Carlos Garcia, a barber at Caledonia Street Barbers in Sausalito. “But the other thing is, we’ve been shut down for three months and the financial ramifications from that are pretty bad. I don’t think a lot of us can survive another three months without working.”
Garcia said business at the barber shop was booming after it reopened, driven by the pent-up demand for haircuts.
“Now we go back square one,” he said.
Marin’s gyms, hotels, vacation rentals, nail salons and massage parlors were slated to reopen on
to the same day as hair salons, but health officials pulled back on that plan after the county reported a record tally of new coronavirus cases and hospitalizations at the end of June.
Because the county had already begun to ease off the accelerator for reopening businesses, Newsom’s order on Monday “is in some ways less disruptive for Marin than in some of the other jurisdictions,” Willis said.
“It makes a lot of sense,” he said of the governor’s order. “Looking across the state, this seems like the right time for statewide action. There’s so much travel now that you can’t just have an independent county strategy.”
Willis said customers can continue to shop inside retail stores in Marin. Newsom’s closure of malls “refers to the indoor spaces at enclosed malls, where wider mixing and gathering indoors occurs outside of the stores,” he said.
Marin was added to the state’s watch list on July 3 — the same day the county reported a record-setting 55 new infections, which was followed by 75 cases on July 4. On Monday, Placer, Sonoma, Sutter and Yuba counties were added to the list, which has grown from 23 counties last week.
Other Bay Area counties on the list include Contra Costa, Napa and Solano. Newsom said all Californians should be prepared for their counties to jump on or off the list.
As of Monday, the state is averaging more than 8,200 cases a day. Hospitalizations have risen 28% over the past two weeks, and the rate of coronavirus tests returning positive results is now at 7.7% — up from 4.6% about three weeks ago.
Marin has tallied 1,809 infections since the beginning of the pandemic — not including the 1,925 inmates at San Quentin State Prison who have contracted the virus. On Monday, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reported that 10 San Quentin inmates with coronavirus have died. Deaths at the prison are not included in Marin’s count.
Road work planned along Highway 37
Caltrans will implement overnight closures of westbound Highway 37 between the Highway 101 interchange and the Petaluma River Bridge from July 27 to the second week of August.
The closures will take effect at 8 p.m. daily and will end at 6 a.m. the following day.
The closures, which
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