Discord: Many Bay Area counties leery of state’s looser sheltering rules
Faced with a ruined economy and mounting political pressure, Gov. Gavin Newsom has opted for a speedy reopening of the state after two months of sheltering in place. The decision has not been universally embraced, leading to a patchwork of policies among counties as life resumes in the shadow of the coronavirus.
Most of the Bay Area is refusing to go along with the governor’s accelerated pace, and a handful of local health officers have criticized his plan as overly risky, especially with COVID19 case counts still climbing across the state.
San Francisco’s new public health order, revealed Thursday afternoon, allows for more businesses to reopen — but not for another two weeks. Even then the city will be far behind the governor’s statewide schedule. The city doesn’t intend to open indoor restaurants or hair salons for six weeks at least.
Meanwhile, a few counties that had initially followed Newsom’s statewide order are backing off after seeing new increases in coronavirus cases. On Wednesday, Sonoma County delayed plans to reopen retail stores, hair salons and religious venues after reporting a spike in cases.
And rural Lassen County, which had been one of only two California counties untouched by COVID19, halted its reopening and ordered restaurants, retail shops and other venues to shut down after reporting its first five cases this week.
“I have concerns at how quickly the state is moving,” said Dr. Chris Farnitano, the Contra Costa County health officer, in a community briefing this week. “If you look at statewide numbers, the daily cases in California are on an upward trend. We in the Bay Area ... are really trying to work together and take a scientific approach, let the data drive decisionmaking and not go too quickly.”
Farnitano joined Dr. Sara Cody, the Santa Clara County health officer, in publicly questioning the governor’s reopening plan and committing to a more sedate pace in most of the Bay Area. At a Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, Cody said that moving too fast doesn’t give authorities time to assess the health of their communities and “leaves us blind.”
The Bay Area has mounted an especially aggressive defense to the pandemic. The reopening plan for most of the region has been based on a staggered schedule, with restrictions eased up every two weeks or so, and only if local indicators like case counts and hospitalization numbers are favorable.
Once heralded for its bold response to the pandemic, however, the Bay Area increasingly stands alone. Even Los
Angeles County, the epicenter of the state’s outbreak, has opted to pick up the pace, allowing religious services and instore shopping to resume, along with some other activities.
Statewide, the governor is easing restrictions at a rapid clip even as the number of new cases climbs — California passed the 100,000mark on
Wednesday. Newsom allowed religious services and hair appointments to resume this week, just days after many counties were granted permission for shops and restaurants to reopen. Guidelines for the film and television industry and gyms are expected within the next week.
Capitol protests, community rebellions against the statewide stayathome order, lawsuits challenging the shutdown measures and public frustration from President Trump have all increased pressure on Newsom. But at a news conference Tuesday, he said stability in the number of hospitalizations and patients in intensive care, as well as increased testing and more availability of personal protective equipment, gave him confidence to reopen more of the state’s economy.
Nevertheless, his speed has raised alarms that the state is operating with insufficient data. Some neighboring states the governor is coordinating with, including Oregon and Nevada, built evaluation periods into their reopening plans, taking two to three weeks to look at the spread of infections before deciding whether they should move into the next phase.
State Sen. Steve Glazer, DOrinda, said he was concerned that California is not doing random testing to determine the extent of community spread of the virus, or research into where infections are occurring. Also, he pointed out that the state has still not explained how it will slow the reopening to stop new outbreaks.
“What’s the driver for these decisions? Is it public health and science or something else?” Glazer said. “It is not easy to understand why we’re advancing with these significant blind spots.”
Dr. Mark Ghaly, California’s health and human services secretary, said the early shutdown order was meant to buy time to prepare hospitals for a potential surge of patients and to raise community awareness about the virus, but always with the knowledge that the state could not stop infections altogether until there is a vaccine.
That strategy is now shifting more authority for reopening back to the counties, which have traditionally taken the lead on public health issues. Ghaly said it was more important for the state to develop guidelines for how to safely resume public life than to set a timeline for when counties must take certain steps.
“The notion that the state is going too fast assumes that the state is setting the pace, but it’s at the county level that the pace is being set,” he said. “I certainly believe that what we are doing and responsible for at the state level is to provide guidance.”
Many counties have applauded Newsom’s move, and some public health experts also say that it makes sense to leave reopening decisions to local authorities, who presumably know what’s best for their communities.
“What we’re seeing is a reflection of ‘one size certainly doesn’t fit all.’ It’s very difficult to know which counties should open up faster than others,” said Stephen Shortell, former dean of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. “Dr. Cody has been hit hard in Santa Clara County, and she’s coming down on the side of maybe we’re moving too fast, and that’s totally understandable. On the other hand, other counties haven’t been hit as hard and they want to reopen, and I get that as well.”
George Rutherford, an infectious disease expert with UCSF and a former state health officer, said, politically, he understands the pressure to reopen quickly and get the economy running again. But epidemiology suggests that slower is safer, he said.
The result, Rutherford said, is that “the governor is putting a hell of a lot of pressure on the local health officers.”
Dr. Matt Willis, the Marin County health officer, said that like most of his Bay Area peers he’s wary of moving too fast in emerging from the region’s collective isolation. Marin County, like San Francisco, plans to reopen some outdoor businesses soon, possibly as early as Monday.
Four other counties — Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara — haven’t yet said when they will allow more business to resume. The three North Bay counties have mostly moved in step with the fasterpaced statewide reopening plan, though Sonoma County backed off from that this week.
The discordant messages from the state and the counties can be confusing for the public, especially in a time already filled with uncertainty, Willis said.
“As much as the state says this is ultimately up to the local leadership, it sends a really strong signal to people who are looking to open more quickly that we’re ready to go. It becomes a challenge to explain why we won’t be moving at the same pace,” Willis said. “In many communities the expectation is to move as quickly as the governor allows, regardless. And I think it can put some heath officers in a difficult situation.”