Sonoma, Alameda counties face new dining restrictions
Sonoma County restaurants, wineries and bars are no longer be able to serve patrons indoors — the latest example of a Bay Area county being told by the state to do more to curb the coronavirus.
The state ordered the restrictions, which took effect Monday at 12:01 a.m., after the rate of infections in the county continued to climb over the weekend. The new rules — which also affect movie theaters, museums and cardrooms — will remain in place at least until Aug. 2.
“This new order by the state does not come as a surprise given the rapid escalation of our infection rate and hospitalizations,” Dr. Sundari Mase, the county’s public health officer, said in a statement Sunday. “This will be one more tool to help us slow the spread in our community.”
The rate of infections per 100,000 residents climbed from 20 cases in early June to more than 120 Sunday, Mase said.
Outdoor dining, outdoor tasting rooms and takeout food service are still permitted for now. Bars and breweries are allowed to serve alcohol outdoors, but only with a meal.
Sonoma County isn’t alone in seeing oncepromising efforts to contain the virus slip away.
In the Bay Area, where coronavirus hospitalizations hit another record Saturday with 578 patients, Napa and Marin counties have also been forced to close indoor restaurants and other businesses because of escalating caseloads. San Francisco postponed its plan to allow indoor dining.
Alameda County also just landed on the state watch list. Because of state rules, the county is even revoking permission for restaurants to operate outdoors, leaving it the only Bay Area county relegated to takeout and delivery only. The county hopes to get permission from the state soon to resume outdoor restaurant service.
The recent problems in Alameda County, which has more cases than any other county in the Bay Area although it is in the middle of the pack per capita, stem from people interacting without face coverings or social distancing, as well as “ongoing transmission among health care workers, within households, in frontline workplace settings, and in skilled nursing and other congregate living facilities,” the state health department said.
Thirtyfive people with the 1,000person Alameda County Sheriff’s Office have been infected with the virus, according to Sgt. Ray Kelly, a spokesman. The sheriff’s office tweeted Sunday that a senior deputy is in the intensive care unit in critical condition with COVID19 and is “fighting so hard to survive.”
Just two Bay Area counties — San Francisco and San Mateo — are not on the state’s monitoring list.
In Marin County, 1,469 inmates at San Quentin prison are currently infected, with several hundred others having recovered. More than 200 prison staff have also caught the virus, according to state figures last updated Friday.
Two San Quentin inmates died Saturday at hospitals from what appears to be complications brought on by COVID19, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced Sunday, bringing the total number of prisoner deaths to nine.
California’s sevenday average of new coronavirus cases per day rose to 8,664 over the past week, the state Department of Public Health said Sunday, up from the average of 6,987 a week earlier.