Although hopes were high this week, Sonoma County again failed to reopen the business world and industry broadly during the state’s reopening of the community amid the pandemic.
Despite a sharp decline in coronavirus cases and related hospitalizations over the past few weeks, Sonoma County’s new daily population per 100,000 population – a major measure of virus transmission – remains slightly above the state’s threshold. most limited stage of the reopening system with four parts.
“Stay there, we’re so close,” said the provincial health officer, Dr. Sundari Mase, said. ‘We are about to go into the red’, a less restrictive stage that will allow, among other things, restaurants to finally resume within a limited indoor dining room after a break since late last summer.
The province has been stuck in the press level, reserved for the areas in California’s 58 counties with a widespread COVID-19 circulation, since the state introduced its Blueprint for a safer economy reopening of the road map at the end of August .
For local residents as well as businesses, the severe restrictions were painful. There is continued isolation and homeschooling for most students and major financial bleeding at many companies.
Business community experts estimated last week that between 75 and 100 provincial businesses, many of them smaller businesses, were affected by the pandemic that began last March. Although a large group is back at work, more than 30,000 people were forced to be unemployed during the annual battle against the pathogen that killed more than 300 locals and infected more than 28,500 people.
Peter Rumble, chief executive of the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber, said on Tuesday he had received several messages from chamber members being let down by the province because they were no longer eligible to resume more commercial activities.
But on the bright side, there is another realistic scenario that could develop later in the week to allow the province to qualify to reopen its economy further.
Last week, Gavin Newsom announced that a vaccine was being pushed across the country into the poorest neighborhoods in California – home to 8 million people. Government officials said that once COVID-19 vaccinations go into the arms of 2 million people in the disadvantaged communities, the key measure of viral transmission for reopening will be slightly higher.
After reaching the 2 million vaccination threshold, a province in the press level like Sonoma will need a daily virus infection rate no higher than 10 per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 7. Sonoma County’s rate was at 9 on Tuesday and the adjusted level was 8.2 per 100,000, which the province will take into account to extend the reopening of the community, as long as the positivity rate of the virus does not rise.
Public health officials confirmed on Tuesday that a province with such persons could move to the red level in such cases the day after the state reaches the 2 million vaccination threshold in impoverished communities – none of which is in Sonoma County. According to the state’s online vaccination panel, the state has vaccinated nearly 1.9 million of its poorest residents as of Monday.
“The spark of hope is through vaccination,” Rumble said, hoping that state health officials would soon reach their vaccination goal. “It makes sense that we start looking at vaccinations as the key to how we can work safely and go back to what will not be normal, but something that takes us out of the pure exclusion scenario.”
The province’s campaign to immunize residents against COVID-19 is still hampered by tight stockpile vaccine doses. Nevertheless, 11.6% of the adults in the county of about 490,000 people were fully vaccinated, while 28% received one of the two shots needed, with two of the three vaccines approved by the federal authorities.
In the Bay Area, only the provinces of Sonoma and Contra Costa are still in the press reopening level. As of Tuesday, the day the state does its weekly assignments for provinces in reopening phases, 34 provinces across the state have remained in the tough press stage.
Adjacent Bay Area provinces of Napa, Marin and Solano progressed to less restricted stages. Outside the region north of us, however, Mendocino and Lake County join Sonoma in the press level.
Once Sonoma County moves into the reopening phase, local restaurants can resume indoor dining with 25% of the customer’s capacity, and several other businesses can expand their operations. For example, gyms can resume workouts with a capacity of 10% and grocery stores can expand from 50% to full capacity. For now, restaurants and brewpubs need to continue with food, drinks and extracts outside.
Meanwhile, provincial health officials on Tuesday reported three more deaths due to coronavirus complications, bringing the death toll from pandemic to 306. The three latest deaths occurred on March 2, 4 and 5.
The three victims were a woman and a man over 64 living in the general population. The third was a man between 18 and 49 who also lives in the community, rather than a parental care facility.
Of the 306 total deaths, 168, or 55% of them, were local residents of competent nursing homes and help centers. Even virus-related deaths and new infections among residents of elderly care – which had the deadliest burden of the pandemic – have sharply diminished in recent weeks.
With the great progress that the inhabitants of the province have suppressed the virus, Mase said: “rather than being discouraged, we must continue with all the (coronavirus) mitigation measures and all the things that people do.”
You can contact staff writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or [email protected]. On Twitter @pressreno.