Officials move up health orders
New lockdown to start Sunday in five Bay Area counties and Berkeley ahead of state timeline
Health officers in the Bay Area’s biggest counties announced Friday they are speeding up the timeline to as early as Sunday to start the governor’s latest coronavirus restrictions aimed at quelling a massive surge in new infections that threatens to overwhelm hospitals.
The joint action by health officers in Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara,
San Francisco and Marin counties and the city of Berkeley comes a day after Gov. Gavin Newsom announced new restrictions on businesses and activities that were supposed to take effect in mid-to-late December when the region’s availability of intensive care beds is expected to fall below 15%.
Though the Bay Area still has the most ICUs available among the state’s five regions, local officials saw no reason to wait.
“It’s sort of like waiting to put the brakes on when you’re about to go over the cliff,” said Santa Clara County Executive Jeff Smith. “If you’re going to get the public health benefit, you have to do it now.”
The new stay-at-home order will take effect starting at 10 p.m. Sunday in Santa Clara, San Francisco and Contra Costa counties. In Alameda County and Berkeley, it is scheduled to take effect just past midnight Monday morning and in Marin County at noon Tuesday. The new restrictions will remain in place until Jan. 4.
The Bay Area orders don’t alter the rules Newsom announced Thursday, said Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody. “The only thing we’re changing is the timing.”
The state’s restrictions require Californians in affected regions to stay at home as much as pos
sible to limit mixing with other households, which can lead to COV ID - 19 spread. It limits travel to critical services and restricts outdoor activities for exercise.
“Don’t mix even with a small group,” Berkeley Public Health Officer Dr. Lisa B. Hernandez said. “If you have a social bubble, it is now popped.”
Outdoor playgrounds, barbershops, hair salons and personal care services, museums, campgrounds, zoos and aquariums, theaters, wineries, bars, breweries, distilleries, family entertainment centers, card rooms, live sports and amusement parks must close. Restaurants will be limited to takeout and delivery.
But schools already open for in-person learning may continue to stay open under the state restrictions, retailers may operate at 20% capacity, and places of worship can continue outdoor services.
Santa Clara County is also maintaining most of its own stricter rules announced last weekend — banning contact sports, including college and pro football; requiring a twoweek quarantine for travelers from more than 150 miles away; and limiting retail capacity. Cody said that order’s retail capacity limit of 10% now will be increased to 20% to align with the state limit.
But while Santa Clara County is keeping the rules that sent the 49ers, Stanford and San Jose State football teams packing to play in other parts of the country, Hernandez said Berkeley will follow the state’s latest rules and won’t stop the University of California from playing football.
“I’m confident in their program and the measures they instituted for protecting their players,” Hernandez said, adding that includes continual player testing.
Since the start of the pandemic, the Bay Area has taken a leading role in responding to the virus. In March, the region adopted a first-in-the- country lockdown that came days before Newsom announced his statewide stay-home order, also a national first in the pandemic. But not every county in the Bay Area region chose to join the coalition this time. Friday’s announcement did not include health officers from San Mateo, Napa, Sonoma, Solano, Santa Cruz or Monterey counties.
San Mateo County said in a statement Friday that it “appreciates the measures taken by the other Bay Area counties” but “will not at this time be issuing a new local stay- at-home order” and “remains focused on following the state’s existing metrics and process.” Santa Cruz County said it is considering its options.
The early action comes despite the Bay Area being the region with the largest buffer from triggering the state’s 15% threshold for intensive care capacity. On Friday, the state listed the intensive care availability in the Bay Area region at 25.3%. It lists Greater Sacramento at 22.2%, Southern California at 20.6%, the San Joaquin Valley at 19.7% and Northern California at 18.6%.
California’s weekly average of new COVID-19 cases reached another record high Thursday as the state reported triple- digit fatalities from the virus for the third consecutive day. Hospital beds statewide filled to their highest point of the pandemic, with 8,831 patients currently hospitalized, including 2,066 of them in intensive care. In the Bay Area, the 2,581 new cases Thursday were the region’s second-highest single- day total.
Bay Area health officers Friday said they are already seeing indications that Thanksgiving gatherings are driving new infections.
“We hope that by acting early and as a region, we will have the best chance of bending the curve the fastest and getting out of this situation sooner and saving more lives,” Cody said.
Still, restaurant owners reacted with alarm to the quicker timeline for closing on- site dining. Cody said, “We do understand we’re asking our businesses to do something rather heroic and that they need time to put things in place.”
W hi le c r it ic s h ave blamed Bay Area health officials for being too aggressive over the course of the pandemic, many health experts say they have taken the right measures at the right time to slow the spread of the virus.
“The Bay Area has had the best leadership in the state and arguably the best leadership in the country in terms of its public health officers,” said John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at UC Berkeley. “We’ve seen that from the beginning of this pandemic.”