Name: Bay Area must avoid 'mistake' of reopening too fast, health official warns
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Bay Area must avoid 'mistake' of reopening too fast, health official warns

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By | Bay Area News GroupA top Bay Area health official warned Tuesday against repeating the “mistake” of reopening too quickly, even as back for in-person instruction and California’s positivity rate so far in the pandemic.Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody told the Board of Supervisors Tuesday evening that the state’s new coronavirus guidelines — which allow at a faster clip — remain too lenient when it comes to activities like indoor dining, potentially giving way for a repeat of the summer’s wave of cases.Instead, Cody plans to monitor fallout from schools reopening and reevaluate in a few weeks, she said.“Remember, we’re still at significant amounts of COVID spread, and we don’t want to make the mistake that we collectively made earlier where we went a little bit too fast — and then spent the summer with quite a bit of COVID transmission,” Cody said.“That’s a pretty big step to take,” she added of schools.That didn’t sit right with several supervisors who say they’ve been inundated with calls from frustrated restaurant and business owners. Supervisor Susan Ellenberg, who has questioned Cody’s reopening timeline for months, argued that outdoor dining will become less feasible as California’s cooler, wetter season edges closer.“Our strategy of outdoor only — while it may be biologically ideal — will not work,” Ellenberg said. “Dr. Cody’s priority and role is to protect the health of our residents and control the spread of COVID. It is our job, the job of the Board of Supervisors, to protect the needs to our residents more broadly.”In that vein, supervisors voted unanimously to expand a coronavirus isolation and quarantine program that has provided motel rooms to people who get sick with COVID-19 and provided financial support to people isolating at home.Since June, more than 350 households have been provided a motel room to quarantine, and another 171 have received financial assistance while sheltering at home, according to a county report. Now the program has been extended to include the county’s 15 cities — rather than just residents who live in unincorporated parts of Santa Clara County — and will last through the year.Board President Cindy Chavez praised county staff for standing up the program and building what she called a “contact tracing empire” of about 900 staffers — but added that decisions surrounding coronavirus reopening strategy and services are not bound to get easier.“We’re at a really critical junction, and I do think the next six months will be harder than the last six months,” Chavez said.We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. We reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.Get Morning Report and other email newslettersFollow UsMost PopularClose

By | Bay Area News GroupA top Bay Area health official warned Tuesday against repeating the “mistake” of reopening too quickly, even as back for in-person instruction and California’s positivity rate so far in the pandemic.Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody told the Board of Supervisors Tuesday evening that the state’s new coronavirus guidelines — which allow at a faster clip — remain too lenient when it comes to activities like indoor dining, potentially giving way for a repeat of the summer’s wave of cases.Instead, Cody plans to monitor fallout from schools reopening and...

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Fiona Kelliher is a breaking news reporter at The Mercury News. She previously covered housing and real estate for the San Francisco Business Times. Originally from Minneapolis, she is a fan of almost any food that is fried and eaten on a stick.

https://www.mercurynews.com/author/fiona-kelliher/

Fiona Kelliher

Latest Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area news from reporters & columnists at The Mercury News.

Bay Area must avoid 'mistake' of reopening too fast, health official warns

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