Mendocino County Health Officer ‘cautiously optimistic’
UKIAH » Mendocino County Public Health Officer Andy Coren said Friday that he was “cautiously optimistic” about the latest numbers hewas seeing in terms of newCovid-19 cases.
“Some good news is our daily case rate, seven days ago, is decreasing, and is under the magic number of seven, which puts us in the range of the red tier. But it’s important to understand that we’re not in the red tier yet, we have another week to go, and we’ve got to really batten down the hatches so we make it there,” said Coren, referring to county being able to move out of the most-restrictive, or purple, tier.
“Because of that, I’ve done something that I haven’t done before,” said Coren, explaining that while the state recently relaxed rules for gatherings, “that is something we are not going to be able to do because we are one of nine counties in California who are still in the purple tier. So I have elected not to relax the guidance for gatherings quite yet, because I really want us to get down to the red tier … and the problem with gatherings is they are higher risk, and if we have more outbreaks, we are likely to be foiled in that march to red.
“But I wanted to let people know that I’m cautiously optimistic, because we’ve got our first red line in one of these graphs I’m looking at,” he said, referring to the decrease in thedaily case rate.
However, on Thursday there were 14 new cases of Covid-19,
and three more Friday, for a total of 1,080 as of Oct. 16. Three patients were hospitalized Friday, and there have been 21 deaths.
As to themost recent outbreaks, Coren said he believed the outbreak at Ken Fowler Motors was under control, and “I can happily say that I think the outbreak in Round Valley is very well controlled, because we haven’t had any new cases for several days.”
As for the cases in Manchester, Coren said “there were a couple of positives on the reservation in the past couple of days, but they were not linked epidemiologically to any of the others, sowe think that the outbreak is really coming under control. But we’re still doing another roundof tests next week to make sure.”