Santa Clara County joined California to suspend a home stay request on Monday, allowing businesses to reopen under previous purple-level restrictions.
With immediate effect, outdoor dining and personal care services can return to business, and professional, university, adult and youth sports can also be resumed.
“Santa Clara County continues to have very high COVID-19 transmission rates,” said county health officer, Dr. Sara Cody. “Our collective actions so far have saved lives and helped protect our health care system from collapse. I encourage all residents to remain vigilant, wear a mask whenever they leave the house, maintain a distance of at least 6 feet from anyone outside their home and be vaccinated when it is their turn. “
State officials said they are starting to see the increase in COVID-19 in California slow, despite many hospitals having little space for patients.
Intensive care units in Santa Clara County are barely below capacity.
On January 23, 307 ICU beds were occupied with 160 of them with COVID-19 patients. The maximum capacity of the ICU is 317 beds, according to the municipality’s website. Local hospitals are caring for 545 COVID-19 patients, which include ICU patients.
The Bay Area region has only 8.2% of the available ICU beds, according to state data.
Even so, state officials said they were seeing signs of hope.
“Californians heard the urgent message to stay at home as long as possible and accepted the challenge of slowing down the increase and saving lives,” said Dr. Tomás Aragón, a California public health officer. “Together, we changed our activities knowing that our short-term sacrifices would lead to long-term gains. COVID-19 is still here and is still deadly, so our work is not over, but it is important to recognize that our collective actions saved lives and we are turning a critical corner. “
The request for a stay at home limited restaurants to take-out and delivery – closing outdoor and indoor meals. This allowed retailers to continue operating at 20% of capacity. Closed barber shops, manicures, personal hygiene services, cinemas, museums, bars and cellars.
Before the county entered the order to stay at the state home on December 4, it was in the purple layer, which imposes most restrictions, but allows many companies to operate outdoors. Under the purple layer, people can dine al fresco and the hairdressing and manicure salons can offer indoor services with masks and limited capacity. Non-essential retail stores can fill up to 25% of capacity.
Gyms can allow people to exercise outdoors. Piercing studios and tattoo studios can also open indoors with modifications.
Schools must wait until their counties are at the least restrictive red level for five consecutive days to open, but can continue to take classroom lessons if they have already reopened the campus with an exemption.
Despite the increase in COVID-19 patients in Santa Clara County ICUs, California Secretary of Health and Human Services, Dr. Mark Ghaly, said most people in the state took the advice to stay home and avoid meetings during the holidays.
“California is slowly starting to emerge from the most dangerous wave in this pandemic, which is the light at the end of the tunnel that we expected,” said Ghaly. “Seven weeks ago, our hospitals and frontline health workers were pushed to the limit, but Californians heard the urgent message to stay home when possible and our increase after the December vacation did not overburden the health care system to the degree that we feared. “
Senator Dave Cortese, who represents most of San Jose, expressed support for the changes and said revising the order would ease companies struggling with closures.
“Thanks to the collective effort and sacrifice made by community members across California, we have made progress to slow the spread of this virus, ensuring that our hospital system is not overburdened and protecting the lives of each of us,” said Cortese.
But other South Bay officials seemed unaware of the changes in state restrictions.
In a tweet, Assembly member Evan Low, who represents Cupertino, Campbell and parts of San Jose, hinted that people were asking him about the state’s plan to suspend the stay order before he was even notified. about.
People: Is it true? CA is lifting the shelter on site?
Me: huh? I did not hear.
People: It’s all on Twitter.
Me: Oh.
People: Aren’t you a civil servant? Shouldn’t you be inside?
Me: * sigh * 🤦♂️Where to start … pic.twitter.com/hn1LhIeR6g
– Evan Low (@Evan_Low) January 25, 2021
The county recorded 98,057 cumulative COVID-19 cases and 1,234 deaths.
Contact Mauricio La Plante at [email protected] or follow @mslaplantenews on Twitter.