SAN DIEGO COUNTY, Calif. — San Diego County officials announced an additional 110 cases from COVID-19 and seven new reported deaths bringing the totals to 4,429 and 165 respectively.
The fatalities reported Thursday include two women and five men. The percentage of deaths among the Latino population continues to rise, up to 41.2% of all deaths, as the mortality rate among the white population has dropped below half of all deaths.
Officials discussed how several industries and businesses will be able to open in San Diego County starting Friday. The types of businesses include retail stores, and manufacturing businesses and warehouses that support retail businesses.
"As the governor has mentioned, some businesses will be able to open as soon as tomorrow," said San Diego County Board of Supervisors Chairman Greg Cox. "Let me re-emphasize that when they do reopen we are only talking about allowing curbside pick-ups and not allowing customers inside the story just yet."
Retail businesses that will be allowed to reopen include bookstores, clothing stores, toy stores, florists and sporting goods stores.
When they open their doors, businesses must ensure that social distancing and the face-covering guidelines are being followed to prevent or slow the spread of the virus.
Earlier this week, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors laid out a safety framework for reopening businesses noting that no business can reopen until authorized by Governor Gavin Newsom's executive order. All businesses must develop a Safe Reopening Plan that ensures the guidelines of the framework are implemented.
A template SRP can be seen below:
Also on Wednesday, California Governor Gavin Newsom outlined rules for the reopening of businesses. According to Newsom and health officials, some counties, if they have data to support the decision, can move further into phase two. This will depend on epidemiological stability, protecting workers, testing capacity, and containment capacity. One criteria for a county to move forward is no COVID-19 deaths within the last 14 days countywide.
Supervisor Nathan Fletcher said he does not anticipate San Diego will be able to move faster with reopenings than the state of California.
"We plan to move consistent with the governor's guidance," he said.
Fletcher also reported Thursday the county was amending some of the childcare health orders it had set down in March, including raising the number of children allowed in independent childcare groups with one adult from 10 to 12, and allowing shared use of hard-surfaced areas such as kitchens and bathrooms -- provided those common areas saw consistent cleaning. These modifications bring San Diego County more into alignment with California's recommendations.
The county has an online dashboard for the COVID-19 outbreak in San Diego and a mobile version seen below.