Vallejo: More businesses are opening

More businesses in Vallejo will soon be able to change signs in their front windows, reading “We’re Open.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom lifted COVID-19 stayat-home orders across California on Monday as the state will now return to a system of county restrictions and tiers. Bay Area counties — and all but four counties throughout the state — will remain in the “purple” tier, which has the most severe restrictions but allows some businesses to reopen.

Under the purple tier, certain activities and businesses such as outdoor dining, camp

grounds, cardrooms, museums and zoos and indoor gyms and hair and nail salons can resume operations with limited capacity. The state is also ending the 10 p.m.to5a.m.curfew.

Public Health Administrator of Solano County Health and Social Services, Jayleen Richards, confirmed on Monday that Solano County will follow the state order.

“Solano is pleased that we have moved from the stay at home order to a less restrictive status, purple tier,” she said. “We are pleased that the number of COVID-19 positive cases are continuing to decline and we hope we maintain this trend.”

Many local businesses owners in Vallejo were immediately thrilled, despite the short notice.

“I was excited and relieved as this past month has been very challenging,” Good Day Cafe owner Darrell Ebuen told the TimesHerald on Monday. “It was tough and the losses were significant, similar to what we experienced in March.”

Good Day Cafe, located in downtown Vallejo on Georgia Street, has been open for takeout only since Dec. 17.

Ebuen said he’s telling employees they will attempt to re-start outdoor dining on Tuesday, although an atmospheric river storm is scheduled to hit the area at the same time.

“Yeah that’s really bad timing,” Ebuen said, with a laugh. “We’ll see what we can do comfortably. We had our outdoor area opened in the past during rain. We have about 11 tables that can seat two people at each of

them and we do have heaters, but we can’t put them under a canopy.”

Due to the upcoming storm, Mare Island Brewing Co. co-founder Kent Fortner said his business won’t reopen with outdoor dining until next Wednesday, Feb 3. Fortner said he prefers the tier system to the regional system and also questioned the lack of notice given by Newsom.

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s great news to be reopening, but at the same time it’s maddening because I have no inventory of food now and it’s going to take 7-14 days to get everyone back working,” Fortner said. “But it would be nice to know the framework. The biggest worry in the restaurant business is uncertainty and lack of consistency and transparency.”

Newsom cited many reasons for the lifting of a curfew in a tweet Monday, including saying cases are down 37.9 percent over the last seven days.

“Yesterday, we performed 403,193 tests — Average test positivity rate: 8 percent — Hospitalizations: down 20 percent in last 2 weeks — ICU admissions: down 10 percent in last 2 weeks,” Newsom’s tweet stated.

The state previously had been placed in five regions, including the Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley and Southern California regions, which all had stay-at-home orders and a curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.. Under that system, a multi-county region had to shut down most businesses and order people to stay home if ICU capacity dropped below 15 percent.

“Together, we changed our activities knowing our short-term sacrifices would lead to longer-term gains. COVID-19 is still here and

still deadly, so our work is not over, but it’s important to recognize our collective actions saved lives and we are turning a critical corner,” Dr. Tomas Aragon, the state’s public health director, said in a statement.

Vallejo Mayor Robert McConnell said he was for the lifting of the stay-at-home order, but with precautions.

“I think if we practice social distancing and wearing a mask and meet in low moderation, it’s a risk we need to take,” he said. “I worry about the economy and businesses here as too many of them are going bankrupt. I am hoping that restaurants here can maintain the guidelines and social distancing. It comes down to practicing the guidelines set out.

“We have to keep an eye on the numbers that are going down we have to continue to be vigil against big family gatherings,” McConnell continued. “We have young people getting it (COVID-19) and then seniors pay the price. We can’t have that.”

Last week the Bay Area region’s ICU availability was below 10 percent but as of Monday at noon had climbed all the way to 23.4, according to the state site, https://covid19.ca.gov/. The San Joaquin and Southern California regions were both at 0 percent ICU availability last week, but San Joaquin is currently at 1.3 while Southern California remains at 0 percent, according to the same site.

“Solano is not clear about the new calculations used to determine ICU capacity in the region. We would have to defer questions about the calculations to California Department of Public Health,” Richards said. “It is clear in Solano County that

even though the number of positive COVID-19 cases is still high, the number of positive cases appears to be trending in down and we hope that we can maintain this trend in Solano County.”

There have been many reasons and actions that have helped slow the surge in cases and hospitalizations, according to Richards.

“We had more than 400plus cases per day at the peak of this surge and we are down to just over 100 plus cases per day,” Richards said. “This is still a high positivity rate and the data is trending towards a positive direction.”

The Solano County Department of Public Health also listed some reasons for the number of cases moving down in a news release. They include:

• The Regional Stay at Home Order urged Californians to stay home except for essential activities, which helped lower disease transmission levels and reduce burden on the hospital system.

• California deployed more than 4,100 medical professionals to facilities across the state to ease the burden on frontline health care workers.

• The state provided assistance within hospitals in the form of personal protective equipment, ventilators and help with oxygen supply.

• California also helped hospitals expand their capacity by opening 16 alternate care sites, lower-acuity facilities where COVID-19 patients get a bridge from hospital to home as they are recovering.

“California is slowly starting to emerge from the most dangerous surge of this pandemic yet, which is the light at the end of the tunnel we’ve

been hoping for,” said California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly. “Seven weeks ago, our hospitals and front-line medical workers were stretched to their limits, but Californians heard the urgent message to stay home when possible and our surge after the December holidays did not overwhelm the health care system to the degree we had feared.”

Because case rates remain high across most of the state, the state’s Hospital Surge Order remains in place to prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed.

Not everyone in California was for dropping the stay-athome order, especially with new and potentially more contagious variants of the coronavirus spreading in California and across the world. Some are also worried about the possibility of upcoming large Super Bowl parties being held on Feb. 7.

Dr. Supriya Narasimhan, chief of Infectious diseases at Santa Clara County Valley Medical Center, said if people fail to continue to follow similar guidelines to the statewide stay-at-home order, the state could likely see another surge in COVID-19.

“I appreciate the fact that our small businesses and economy are really struggling with shelter-in-place and that is why the governor wants to lift it, but we’re still seeing high rates of transmission in certain pockets and I don’t think we’ve rolled out enough vaccines to see the protection we need at a community level,” she said.

Bay Area News Group reporters Maggie Angst and Cal Inman contributed to this report.