San Luis Obispo County provisionally approved with wider reopening next week

Southern California is slowly emerging from a very dark and devastating winter coronavirus outbreak and appears to be heading towards a broader reopening in the coming weeks. Yesterday, state officials announced a series of new progressions in the county to less restrictive levels, paving the way for things like increasing restaurant capacity, returning some indoor gyms, reopening shopping mall food courts and more. And while none of the five counties officially allowed to reopen this week was in Southern California (boo, NorCal), the state offered a “preview” list of seven other counties that could progress to the lower red level next week.

Among those on the “preview” list is San Luis Obispo County, on the Central Coast, a popular weekend destination for Angelenos residents looking to embrace the wine region and coastal life. As a result of the county’s undulating geography and much lower population density, the county fared much better than the counties of Santa Barbara and Ventura in containing COVID-19.

If the SLO’s current case rate continues, it should be able to enter the new lower red level next Tuesday. Local authorities do not want to take any risks, however, and are asking more county residents to take the test this week to expand the range of data in the hope of further reducing the overall rate of test positivity. Currently, the county’s adjusted case rate is 9.4 per 100,000 residents, slightly above the limit of seven cases per 100,000 residents required for a new reopening.

So, where does that leave other counties near Los Angeles, like Kern, Riverside, Santa Barbara and Orange? None of them appear on the state’s projected reopening list for next week, but several counties may change to the lower red level as early as March, if cases continue to decline. For example, Orange County’s adjusted case rate is 11.9 per 100,000 residents, with a test positivity rate of 5.4%; Los Angeles County has 12.3 cases per 100,000 residents and a test positivity rate of 5.1 percent. Both metrics are vital for counties to be given greater reopening privileges by state public health officials. The limits for each color-coded layer can be seen below.

It is becoming increasingly clear to many public health experts that the deadly winter wave of COVID-19 in southern California has dramatically configured the region for a wide reopening in the spring, in part because many people have unfortunately contracted the virus. Just yesterday, LA County surpassed 20,000 coronavirus deaths. Add to that the continuing pressure for vaccinations within LA County and it will be easy to understand why cases have been dropping so precipitously in recent times. Add to that the recent confirmation that restaurants and other food industry workers will be prioritized for vaccines starting March 1, and there is certainly reason for some limited optimism within the hospitality industry in general.

However, it is important to note that county vaccination efforts are far from continuous, as many mass vaccination sites have had to darken due to lack of vaccines and the media have widely reported the uneven distribution of vaccines, which has left many people of color behind. This is all to say that Los Angeles has a long way to go before it returns to ‘normal’, although now it is obvious within the restaurant industry and moreover ‘normal’ no longer exists.

With COVID-19 cases falling rapidly, when will LA begin to reopen more fully? [ELA]