Youth Dec. 31 party raises virus fears

An entertainment center located in the county with the worst recent coronavirus numbers in California plans to proceed with a New Year’s Eve “lock-in” event, letting parents drop off teens and preteens for a late-night party later this week despite strong discouragement from the local health office.

Millennium Family Entertainment Center in Yuba City, which offers an arcade, laser tag, rock climbing and more, will let parents bring kids ages 11 through 17 on the last night of 2020 and pick them up in the early hours of 2021.

In a Facebook post Sunday, Millennium wrote that it was “nervously wondering” whether people would show up for Thursday’s fourhour event due to the “current crazy situation going on.” More than 100 users on the site indicated they were “interested.”

The “crazy situation” is the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen about one in 19 Californians and one in 13 Yuba City residents test positive for the respiratory disease over the past 10 months, according to state and local health officials.

Health experts have long said the riskiest activities for COVID-19 transmission are those that are indoors, unmasked, last long periods of time and in which social distancing is a challenge. They’ve also urged against holiday gatherings.

Millennium’s lock-in event appears to check all of those boxes, except it requires masks, according to an online event description. But it’ll also serve food, meaning masks will have to come off at some point. The description says social distancing is “encouraged” and attractions will be sanitized between uses.

“Such an event is not permissible under the state order, and the local advisory makes it very clear that such events put the greater community at risk for spreading the virus,” Yuba County spokeswoman Rachel Rosenbaum wrote in an emailed response to The Sacramento Bee about the venue’s party.

But Millennium’s owner, Sara Core, disagrees with the advisory and state orders, and believes her event will be safe due to mask use and sanitation. In an email to The Bee this week, she confirmed her business plans to go forward with the “private event” and defended the decision to do so.

“We take every precaution to be safe for our employees and customers, with strict covid prevention protocols in place and a drastically reduced capacity,” she wrote. “We have customers that want us to be open. We will be here for them, to provide safe fun, as long as we can.”