Orange County is off the watchlist? What about us?

Certain markers need to be met, but the data isn’t always transparent

Residents packed beaches to protest shutdown orders. The sheriff said he wouldn’t enforce mask requirements. The health officer resigned after facing public harassment and intimidation.

That was just a few months ago, when Orange County seemed intent on leading a rebellion against public health mandates intended to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

And yet, this week, Orange County came off the state’s coronavirus watchlist while most Bay Area counties — which were among the state’s first to issue restrictive stay-at-home orders — have not.

The news that a region that saw intense resistance to COVID-19 restrictions amid soaring case rates and hospitalizations just weeks ago has now won the state’s seal of approval to begin a partial return to normal was such a stunner that one respected Bay

Area epidemiologist spit out his proverbial soup.

“Can you f-ing believe that?” said

UC San Francisco’s George Rutherford. “Next stop Disneyland, what can you say?”

That’s not entirely true. While counties that are removed from the watchlist can do such things as reopen all schools for in-person learning two weeks later,

getting off the list isn’t a green light to reopen everything. Counties still have to follow a July health order that closed indoor malls, hair salons, gyms and some other businesses.

But it’s not clear why Orange County has gotten off the watchlist while other places with similar COVID-19 metrics, such as Santa Clara County, remain on it. The California Department of Public Health hasn’t been transparent about the numbers it uses to calculate the metrics — such as case rates and testing positivity rates — used

to determine which counties to monitor. And once the state says a county has met a benchmark, it simply uses a check mark to indicate as much rather than listing a specific figure.

The department says it calculates the total number of cases diagnosed and reported over a 14-day period per 100,000 residents, with a three-day lag. It excludes COVID-19 cases in prisons and uses episode dates, the earliest of several dates associated with a case and the earliest date that the case can be known to have had the infection. The Bay Area News Group compiles the most up-to-date data from county health departments, using total cases based on when they were reported by

the health departments.

While the state says Orange County has met the bar for coming off the watchlist, data collected and analyzed by this news organization show that Santa Clara and Orange counties both have similar 14-day case rates of around 170 per 100,000, well above the 100 listed as the threshold.

The state’s public health department chalked up the difference to using “episode dates,” which is based on date of symptom onset or sample taken, instead of when the case is reported to the public health department, as the data is published publicly. The department has said in the past it will work with and support counties in their efforts to

get off the watchlist.

“It’s just a straight up numbers game,” Rutherford said.

Regardless of how data scientists crunch them, the numbers in Orange County are improving. And while the county drew nationwide attention several months ago when angry scofflaws packed beaches along the coast to protest COVID-related closures, many more residents may actually be adhering to the guidelines and helping to curb the the virus’s spread.

“I suspect that maybe the small minority are out there making all the fuss, and the people directly in the jaws of this — low-income, bluecollar Latino workers — are the ones who are toeing the

line,” he said. “How else did they get off the list?”

Now, Rutherford said, “prevention is more important than ever. … Hopefully everybody gets the message about wearing masks, and we won’t have a big rebound right away.”

Clayton Chau, Orange County’s Health Care Agency director and acting health officer, told the Orange County Register, this news organization’s sister newspaper, he was confident Orange County would keep off the watchlist and move toward reopening schools and more.

“The community must continue our efforts in nonmedical public health interventions such as face coverings, physical distancing, hygiene measures,” Chau said, “and staying home when it is not necessary to go out.”