Mono County News: May 18
Inyo County received a variance to move ahead in reopening last week; Governor Newsom announced new county standards for variance; Mono…
Inyo County received a variance to move ahead in reopening last week; Governor Newsom announced new county standards for variance; Mono County will attest to move forward with reopening this week.
By Monica Prelle
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced updated guidelines for reopening in a press conference today and said that roughly 53 out of 58 counties would likely qualify. Mono County did not previously qualify, but plans to attest for the variance after the state reissued new qualifications.
“We are empowering our local heath directors and county officials that understand their local communities better than any of us,” Gov. Newsom said in a press conference today. “At the same time, we need to hold all of ourselves to account for transparency and accountability in terms of implementation of these rules and regulations.”
Last week Inyo County received the variance allowing the county to start reopening more businesses moving further into stage two. A total of 24 California have already self-attested and been approved by the California Department of Public Health, meaning they can reopen retail stores for shopping and restaurants for dining, on the basis of a number of factors unique to their county.
The new standards for moving forward in stage two are based primarily on stabilized hospitalization rates and preparedness, which includes testing and tracing.
Counties must show no more than 5% increase in hospitalizations rates or 20 people over a seven-day period; and counties must report no more than 25 coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents within 14 days of attestation. The previous rate was one case per 10,000 residents.
Last week when Mono County reported six new cases and eight within the two-week period, it was five times higher than the state standard and another positive case was reported in Mammoth yesterday. As of Monday, May 18 there are now 34 positive cases in Mono County with eight positive cases in the last 14-day period.
Gov. Newsom said the state would be processing applications as quickly as possible and the California Department of Public Health would continuously reassess qualification standards based on data and science, and each county’s individual circumstances.
According to Dr. Mark Ghaly, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, counties will also need to show they have the ability to protect essential workers. Counties must work with their local hospitals to maintain preparedness for surge capacity as an increase of cases can be expected when counties open sectors of business. And, counties must demonstrate the ability to pull back if necessary.
“If we see a sudden surge in hospitalizations or an increase in cases throughout the county, we want to make sure the county has thoughtful plans to potentially reinstitute stay-at-home orders,” Dr. Ghaly said.
In Monday’s press conference, Gov. Newsom also indicated that in the next few weeks counties would be able to start moving even further ahead of the state opening hair salons and professional sports could resume without fans. That is, if the data supports moving ahead and hospitalization rates continue to be stable.
“The idea is to get us all through this phase two so we can start to move into phase three,” Gov. Newsom said. “We are not there phase three yet, but there are parts of the state that can and now are moving deeper through phase two.”
He did not indicate a clear timeline for moving into stage three, which includes spas, gyms, and lodging non-essential nightly rentals.
As of now, most of the counties that have been approved or expect to be approved under new guidelines, are rural, while dense urban regions in the Bay Area and Los Angeles have announced that stay-at-home orders will extend past the state’s pace.
According to Newsom, there has been a 7.5 % statewide decline in hospitalizations and 8.8% decline in ICU admissions. The state continues to procure personal protective equipment and distributing to the counties. It is still unclear how equipment is distributed, however. The state has also trained an additional 500 people for contact tracing.
Gov. Newsom also made a point to remind Californians that the coronavirus has not gone away and is still a threat. In the past 24 hours there were 41 deaths and more than 3,300 have died in California from the coronavirus. The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics is projecting nearly 150,000 deaths in the U.S. by August 4.
“The deadliness of this disease, spread of this disease, the transmissibility of this disease — we cannot impress upon folks enough that this has not gone away,” Gov. Newsom said. “It is still ubiquitous, it is still invisible, but it is very visible to of those who have lost a family member or a loved one.”
The Mono County Board of Supervisors scheduled a special meeting for Tuesday, May 19 at 3 p.m. to discuss attestation for the variance.
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Monica Prelle is a Mammoth Lakes-based independent journalist.
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