SAN DIEGO — Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to release updated guidelines on how to reopen at least some industries Friday once counties get off the state’s monitoring list.
San Diego County was the second county to get off the list last week, and the largest to-date, after having three consecutive days with a coronavirus case rate of less than 100 per 100,000 residents.
San Diego County public health officials reported 277 new COVID-19 cases and five deaths from the illness Thursday, raising the region's totals to 37,499 cases and 673 deaths. Three women and two men died between July 28 and Aug. 26, and their ages ranged from their early 40s to their early 90s.
Of the 5,235 tests reported Thursday, 5% returned positive, raising the 14-day rolling average of positive tests to 3.7%, well below the state's 8% guideline. The seven-day average number of tests performed in the county is 6,946.
Of the total positive cases in the county, 3,040 -- or 8.1% -- have required hospitalization since the pandemic began, and 738 -- or 2% -- were admitted to an intensive care unit.
Some business owners are pressuring the state to relax its rules on industries. Salon owners held a rally last week in San Diego and Sacramento to push the state to resume indoor services.
“We kind of, I think, used more of a grenade than a scalpel in trying to deal with the outbreaks in businesses, particularly when it comes to restaurants and things like that,” said Supervisor Jim Desmond, who has co-signed several letters to the governor about reopening businesses. “We should have used more of a laser focus as opposed to a shotgun focus for those closures.”
Desmond has asked the state to release industry guidance as early as possible so business owners can prepare. He will join several North County mayors at Legoland Friday to call on the state to allow businesses that were closed last month to reopen.
“I've been a large proponent of trying to get businesses open and do it safely. I've never said ‘we ignore the virus. It's a hoax.' I've never said that. I've said, ‘OK, we've got to deal with the virus.’ We have to protect our most vulnerable. But we've got to get our people back to work,” said Desmond.
Currently, only the reopening of schools is tied to the case rate. Once a county is off the monitoring list for 14 consecutive days, then districts can decide whether to resume in-person education for all grade levels.
The California Department of Public Health has spent weeks working on the new guidance in conjunction with county public health officers statewide. Many have publicly said they expect to stagger the reopening of industries to avoid a repeat of late-June and early-July when many businesses reopened, and cases spiked.
The San Diego Health and Human Services Agency acknowledged the county’s case rate of 80.2 reported Thursday is still high despite remaining well below the threshold to reopen schools.
“Even where we are now with an 80 per 100,000 [case rate] is higher than we need to be and higher than we should be,” said Dr. Eric McDonald, M.D., M.P.H., the county’s deputy public health officer and head of HHSA’s Epidemiology and Immunization Services Branch. “That’s still moderate to significant community transmission. We need to be well under 25 per 100,000 to be, what I would consider, headed toward normal. So, we have a long way to go.”