Newsom orders restaurants to take business outdoors, bars closed
California rolls back reopening with statewide restrictions on indoor restaurants, bars, and entertainment; Mono County cases continue to rise with increased visitation, no new hospitalizations
Thank you for reading Mono County Weekly. This newsletter is a weekly recap of community news reported by me, Monica Prelle, a local journalist—so you can stay informed on the the issues that are important to our mountain community.
If you like what you read, please subscribe and consider sharing with people who care about the region as much as you do. Your support is essential to growing the newsletter’s readership and keeping independent local journalism going.
Gov. Newsom rolls back reopening with statewide restrictions on restaurants, bars, and entertainment
Mono County is subject to new statewide restrictions on indoor entertainment. Positive cases of the coronavirus continue to rise locally while positivity rates remain stable. Local testing shortages and personal protective equipment updates
MONO COUNTY, CA—California is starting to roll back stages of reopening as hospitalizations and cases continue to surge around the state. On Monday Gov. Gavin Newsom announced new restrictions on indoor operations including restaurants and entertainment, and ordered bars to close indoors and outdoors statewide.
“This virus is not going away anytime soon,” Gov. Newsom said in press conference yesterday. “I hope all of us recognize that if we’re still connected to some notion that somehow when it gets warm, it’s going to go away or somehow it’s going to take summer months or weekends off—this virus has done neither. “
In order to mitigate the spread of the virus, all counties must close indoor restaurant service and indoor entertainment centers like bowling alleys, museums and movie theaters, effective immediately. Wineries, bars and brew pubs have been ordered to close all operations indoor and outdoors, unless the establishment is connected to food service. Alcohol may only be sold in the same transaction with food.
Newsom also announced additional closures for counties on the state monitoring list including closure of fitness centers, salons, churches, malls, and non-essential offices. Neither Inyo nor Mono counties are on the state monitoring list, so these additional restrictions do not apply locally at this time.
Until yesterday, rollbacks had only effected counties on the state monitoring list, however Newsom explained that statewide restrictions are being inacted because some counties are seeing alarming hospitalization rates and reaching ICU capacities and the state shares resources.
“We have mutual aid capacity,” he said. “We have a system, again, a system which suggests many parts, but one body.”
According to Gov. Newsom, Placer and Butte counties currently have ICU capacity less than 20 percent, and Lake and Imperial counties have had supply constraints on ventilators. While other counties are in good standing, the governor made statewide modifications as a systemic approach to how the state shares assets and resources.
Positive cases of the coronavirus continue to trend upward in Mono County with 13 new cases over the past 14-day period. There are no new hospitalizations and the positivity rate has remained at 2 to 3 percent.
“I do believe a fair amount of our recent spike is secondary to businesses opening up,” Mono County public health manager Brian Wheeler said. “Up until a few weeks ago we weren’t seeing a lot of cases within the county. Now we have visitors.”
Wheeler also attributed a few recent cases to residents traveling outside of the county, and family spread.
With an increase in visitation and movement, calls to the 2-1-1 information line have also increased with a people who are sick and reporting symptoms of communicable disease and respiratory issues, according to public health officer Dr. Tom Boo. Still, Mammoth Hospital remains un-impacted, “fingers crossed,” Dr. Boo said.
Though the hospital is functioning normally, contract hospitals for transferring patients outside of the area are close to ICU capacity.
“Some of facilities are not accepting new COVID patients,” Wheeler said. “That is of concern and something we need to monitor. Currently we don’t have any cases in the hospital, but that doesn’t mean we won’t. I’m sure we will.”
Earlier in the stay-at-home period, Mammoth Hospital Chief Medical Officer Dr. Craig Burrows explained that 8,000 feet is not an ideal place to be a patient with a respiratory illness because of the lack of oxygen here and the preference will always be to transfer critically ill patients.
Mammoth and Northern Inyo hospitals are experiencing supply shortages from the manufacturers in their rapid point-of-care tests, so they are limited in their availability and sending tests out to commercial labs, which are taking about a week to get results back.
“The lack of rapid tests is obviously a concern,” Dr. Boo said. “It’s a problem especially when you are interested in contact tracing or have people who are sick and you need to know whether it is COVID and whether their contacts are at risk or not.”
The public health department tests from its pop-up tent are being sent to state health department labs and the turn-around time is about 48 hours. Wheeler says the department is look at shifting resources and offering more testing in Mammoth.
The county has a robust stockpile of personal protective equipment. To-date 280 gallons of hand sanitizer, 187 gallons of disinfectant, 12,495 N-95 masks, 71,000 surgical masks, and 13,850 gloves have been distributed to Mono County health care workers and local businesses.
As of Tuesday, there have been 336,508 confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 in California and 7,087 total deaths. The statewide 7-day average of new cases is 8,382 per day. The previous 7-day average was 7,837. Mono County has confirmed 52 cases and one death. Inyo County has had 37 cases and one death.
Wearing face coverings is a public health issue, not a political issue, and it is one of the best weapons we have to fight COVID-19. – Dr. Robert R. Redfield, CDC Director
Mono County Businesses Received 24 to 34 Million in Federal Assistance
Mono County businesses received a total of 24 to 34 million dollars in Paycheck Protection Program loans, which are 100 percent forgivable if 60 percent of that money is spent on payroll. The Mono County Economic Department reports that 3,791 jobs, or about 45 percent of the workforce, will be retained because of these loans.
Of the locally acquired PPP loans, 310 businesses received less than $150,000 for a total of $12.3 million; and 34 businesses received loans greater than $150,000 for a total of $10.9 to 24.8 million.
The House recently voted to allow more time for businesses to apply to the program. Applications will re-open on August 8. The Mono County Economic Development Department is assisting local businesses with the process.
The Senate Considers Extending Federal Unemployment
Lawmakers are considering extending the CARES Act federal unemployment aid, according to Washington Post reporting, but at a lower rate than the current $600 boost that will expire at the end of this month. Senators are discussing whether the payments should be reduced to an extra $200 or $400 per week, in addition to the state unemployment wages. According to the US Labor Department, 33 million people are unemployed mostly due to the pandemic.
In California, 41.3 billion has been paid to-date in unemployment benefits because of the pandemic with 3.7 billion last week alone. The California Employment Department has processed 7.5 million claims since mid-March, which surpasses the number of claims of next two largest states, Texas and New York, combined (7.2 million). The EDD extended benefits by 20 weeks, which is now available.
Note to the readers: The coronavirus has brought unprecedented hardships to our community and the world. When the state first declared a public health emergency, like many of you, I found myself unemployed and looking for information that I could not find. Reliable and trustworthy news is as important as ever before, so I threw myself into public service journalism.
If you see value in the reporting that I am doing, please support local independent journalism with a suggested payment of $1 per article. Your contribution is not a charitable donation, it is payment for the work I am doing, which will enable me to keep reporting, bringing you important information during this public health crisis. Your support is essential to keeping independent local journalism going. And, please consider sharing with people who care about the region as much as you do.
A journey on foot / cannot be repeated, just as a story / cannot be recited, only retold. —Robert Bringhurst