CONTRA COSTA COUNTY — By aligning its health order with the state’s reopening blueprint, Contra Costa County will allow more businesses to open up this week, according to county health officials.
Starting Wednesday at 8 a.m., the county’s new rules will allow personal care services that entail close contact with people’s faces to operate outdoors, except for those that do tattoos, piercings and nonmedical electrolysis. Racetracks and cardrooms will be able to operate outdoors, too.
Music, television and film production can begin again, as well as professional sports without a live audience.
Contra Costa County still falls within the “purple tier” of the state’s reopening plan, meaning that COVID-19 remains widespread. According to data most recently published by the health department, the county’s rate of tests returning positive over the last seven days — based on tests taken the previous week — is 4.1%. The average number of daily new cases in the county per 100,000 residents over the last seven days — based on the same time lag — is 6.8%.
The county can progress into the state’s next stage — the “red tier” — when data shows sustained improvement for two straight weeks.
But without enough testing, the data picture is incomplete, so county health officials indicated they will compel large health care providers to beef up testing.
The county is working on a health order now to require health providers to reduce certain barriers for testing, county public health officer Dr. Chris Farnitano told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.
“We are working on a health order to put a requirement on these large health providers to not only provide testing on request for essential workers and others at a higher risk,” Farnitano said, “but also to not put limits on how often you can get a test and not require a physician interview or visit to get a test.”
He explained that county public health officials have been trying to work collaboratively with community health care providers to make testing more accessible for people so they don’t have to rely solely on county testing sites.
“Kaiser is only doing about 18 percent of the tests in the county, but they cover about half the insured lives in Contra Costa,” Farnitano noted.
“We have been working collaboratively and trying to encourage these systems, but they’re not doing as much as we’d like so we’re working on a health order to make that a requirement,” he said.
The county has had to close its outdoor testing sites because of all the unhealthy wildfire smoke and extreme heat, Contra Costa Health Services Director Anna Roth said. She said county health officials are working to reopen testing sites indoors due to those conditions and in preparation for fall and winter weather.
Roth urged people to sign up to get tested at the county sites to help stop the spread of the virus.
August was the deadliest month in Contra Costa for COVID-19, with 55 fatalities. And more than half of those deaths — 58% — were people in the community and not in long-term care facilities — a change from previous months when the majority of deaths had been people in nursing homes or assisted living facilities.
Still, Roth added, other statistics have prompted some optimism. Last week saw the lowest number of COVID-19 patients in the hospital — 62 — since July. As of Monday, the seven-day average of hospitalizations was 67.
County residents who called into the meeting differed widely in their response to the COVID-19 update, with some urging the county to reopen faster and stop what one woman called an “emergency” of “irreversible learning delays” for school children doing distance learning.
When one call said she was tired of being “micromanaged” by public health orders and refuses to wear a mask, Supervisor John Gioia urged people to care for others’ health.
“This is about respect for public health and other people’s health. We have to stop being selfish,” he said. “You’re not respecting other people when you don’t wear a mask.”
Other callers urged the county to do more to increase testing and express fear about reopening businesses.
Melvin Willis, a resident and a Richmond City Council member, said he “can’t shake this feeling around reopening.”
“We need to support our businesses and make sure they can provide services so they don’t go belly up,” Willis acknowledged. But he pointed out that when businesses started to reopen early in the summer, cases increased and he fears that will happen again as winter approaches.
“I don’t have a solution for it — I’m not a healthcare professional — but looking at what happened in July — I am highly concerned we are creating a short-term benefit that will have a long-term impact.”
Health officials have said that if cases surge, they may have to impose more restrictions again.
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