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The public health officers of six Bay Area counties, including Contra Costa and Alameda, announced on Monday that they will be extending their shelter-in-place order through at least the end of May amid the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
More specifics are due to be released later in the week, when the revised shelter order is issued. However, officials said Monday that the new order “will largely keep the current restrictions in place” but “will include limited easing of specific restrictions for a small number of lower-risk activities.”
The existing COVID-19 shelter order had been set to expire this coming Sunday (May 3) in the six counties (Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara), as well as the city of Berkeley, which has its own health division.
“Thanks to the collective effort and sacrifice of the 7 million residents across our jurisdictions, we have made substantial progress in slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus, ensuring our local hospitals are not overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases, and saving lives,” the seven health officers said on Monday.
“At this stage of the pandemic, however, it is critical that our collective efforts continue so that we do not lose the progress we have achieved together,” they added. “Hospitalizations have leveled, but more work is needed to safely re-open our communities. Prematurely lifting restrictions could easily lead to a large surge in cases.”
The formal order extending the shelter-in-place is set to be adopted later in the week, although a specific day was not specified.
“The City of Dublin looks forward to hearing more about which restrictions might be eased within our community. We remain well prepared and will comply with all State and County Executive Orders,” Dublin Mayor David Haubert told DanvilleSanRamon.com.
“San Ramon will continue to provide as many services as we can to residents through the extended order. Over the past month, we have been able to enhance programs for our seniors and at-risk residents to help them through this pandemic,” San Ramon City Manager Joe Gorton said.
“Soon, we will be launching a new program to help San Ramon businesses navigate various State and Federal assistance programs,” Gorton added. “The residents of San Ramon have been strong throughout the pandemic, helping each other and offering assistance in many creative ways. Working together keeps our community strong.”
In terms of confirmed cases, the COVID-19 impact in the Tri-Valley has been felt most among Pleasanton residents with 52 positive tests recorded by the Alameda County Public Health Department as of Monday evening.
Other confirmed results include 35 cases in Livermore, 35 cases for Santa Rita Jail, 34 cases in San Ramon, 24 cases in Dublin, 20 cases in Danville, 17 cases in Alamo and fewer than 10 cases in Sunol, according to officials in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.
Countywide, there were 1,498 confirmed cases and 52 deaths from COVID-19 in Alameda County and 820 confirmed cases and 25 deaths in Contra Costa County.
In explaining their decision to extend the shelter order by nearly one month, officials said the coronavirus pandemic “is still in its early stages,” and smart, strategic planning is necessary in their eyes to ensure public safety when lifting restrictions.
“The virus spreads easily, testing capacity is limited and expanding slowly, and vaccine development is just beginning. We expect to be responding to COVID-19 in our communities for a long time,” they said.
“As effective as our efforts have been, if we move too fast to ease restrictions, the potential of exponential spread could have grave impacts to health and wellness of our residents as well as the economy,” they continued, adding:
“The Health Officers of these seven jurisdictions have been working closely together in leading a unified, regional approach, to protect the health and safety of our residents.”
The Bay Area public health officials also said they plan to release “a set of broad indicators that will be used to track progress in preparedness and response to COVID-19, in alignment with the framework being used by the State of California.”
“Future easing of restrictions requires that each jurisdiction and various sectors continue to rapidly build critical infrastructure and systems to respond to and control the spread of coronavirus infections and to ensure the health care system’s ability to meet demand,” they said.
This is total BULLSHIT! We were asked to participate in this exercise to flatten the curve. The curb has been flattened. We were told that if we didn’t SIP that the hospitals could be overwhelmed. In fact, the hospitals are going broke and healthcare workers are being laid off. Meanwhile, in the real world, hard-working Americans are losing their livelihood, small businesses are going broke, and many who have saved their entire lives for retirement or losing their nest egg . This is pure politics at its worst. iIt’s time for Americans to push back.qqq
George: what does that even mean “politics”? Pure or not. In the absence of adequate testing capacity, which has been hamstrung by federal incompetence and inaction, it would be irresponsible to declare victory and organize a street dance.
We don’t even know the deets yet, but it’s clear that many lives will be saved – George – maybe even yours, and even if you don’t understand or appreciate the favor being done for you.
BTW, only 11% of Californians agree with you – https://www.chcf.org/blog/covid-19-tracking-poll-75-californians-support-shelter-place-as-long-as-needed/ . Most of them will be posting here.
“BTW, only 11% of Californians agree with you” Since when was herd mentality a good measure of intelligence or whats right?
I don’t think anyone is suggesting a street dance or anything irresponsible. But you have to weigh the cost of the cure verses the disease. Clearly officials overreacted based on false data and projections of “millions of US deaths”. Its time to take a more sensible approach and strategically open some businesses and allow healthy low risk people to start to return to a normal life giving back some of the civil liberties that have been taken away meanwhile keeping protective measures in place for those who are at risk.
My family has been hit pretty hard with layoffs (other than those who work in health care, which is a whole other stress factor), but the extension of the shelter in place makes sense to me. We must assume that the reason our hospitals have not been overrun and our ICU staff are not forced with making the decision to place patient A or patient B on a ventilator is because we have applied such extreme measures. I’m an example of someone who has lost work and is quickly depleting her meager “nest egg” but if this practice saves lives, I’m committed to it until we can slowly begin to open up again.
Doug,
Ok lets match New York State’s percent of the population dead would mean we are going to see 35,000 deaths for California and 292,000 dead in the USA. This assumes that the entire population of New York has been exposed and the death count of New York State stops today. But if you assume only 25% of the population of New York State as had Corona virus then the numbers are multiplied by a factor of 4 which results in total death count in USA exceeding 1 million.
We are not even close to the end of the possible death toll and going about business as usual will insure that 1 million people will die in the US. We need a vaccine and testing before we can even have the debate of rescinding the shelter in place order.
So Doug to reach 2 million deaths in the US all we have to do is assume only 14% of the population of New York state has contracted the Corona virus. I even believe 14% is a high number for the percent of the population in New York state that as had the Corona virus.
As other states proceed with gradually opening back up, we shall see if they experience a surge in new cases. And if they don’t, will the SIP “orders” be lifted prior to the end of May? It is interesting that Georgia started the opening-up process, and yet their number of cases per 1 million residents, and their deaths per 1 million residents were, and remain twice as high as in California. There may be a variety of reasons for that, but it also illustrates the different perceptions of risk that exist. It is also interesting that Sweden never instituted lockdowns, or shelter in place orders. They merely applied sensible distancing, without “orders”, and even kept schools open. From memory, their rates are somewhat higher than the US, but lower than Spain, Italy, France, and the UK. I am hopeful that as other states open up, the pressure to begin the process in CA will increase.
I also would like to know if our County Board of Supervisors has voted on the new “orders”, which seem to have been decided on only by the collection of County Health Department heads (at least that’s how the article makes it seem). Are they now able to dictate shutdown orders at any sign of a disease outbreak? They are (naturally) only looking at one aspect of the human cost of the shutdown. They aren’t the right people to also weigh the impact of job losses on health, depression, suicide, domestic violence, non-treatment or delayed treatment of other medical conditions, etc. Meanwhile Newsom still says its too soon for rural counties to open back up, even the remotest CA counties with essentially no deaths, and zero hospitalizations at present.
To all the people in the Tri-Valley who are supporting the continuation of shelter-in-pace orders, you have been fooled. You are the sheep being led to the slaughterhouse. You are part of the middle class who is watching its own destruction without even questioning it all. This virus can travel via air and water at high speeds, and is highly contagious. But, it is not as scary as you are led to believe. The fact of the matter is that this virus started spreading in Bay Area in Early November. By early February, the overwhelming population of the people in Bay Area was already exposed to it. People were having the symptoms of this virus infection in December/January time frame, but they did not get hospitalized, and that is why they survived. At that time, nobody was checking them for this virus. If you are still alive, then it means by a very high probability that you do have immunity to it, i.e. both the virus and the antidote are already in you. Based on my studies, it was a mistake for those with a symptom to go to the hospital. They should have stayed home in isolation, and just should have taken some medication. The exposure to bleach vapor in the hospital rooms, being exposed to cross contamination by the hospital staff, and being connected to the ventilators were actually the tools of death for the majority of them. Ventilators were forcing virus ridden air deeper into the lungs of the patients, therefore further damaging the lungs without any chance of exchanging carbon dioxide with oxygen. Many doctors across the globe, including in California, declared that they managed to cure their seriously ill patients by using mixtures of already existing drugs, but those doctors were silenced quickly. The definition of the “Cause of Death” has been modified for the coroners so that they can assign the death of a lot more people to this virus, thus creating high death numbers; false numbers but high numbers. Are you noticing the news about millions of livestock, chicken, and so on, being killed and buried because the meat processing factories have been forced to shut down? They are calling it depopulation of these animals. I guarantee that a year from now there will be major shortages of meat products, and you will be lucky if you can buy them at even double the price you are paying now. Anyway, the death and destruction caused by continuing this shelter-in-place will be orders of magnitude larger than anything this virus can do in an open society. Do not look at Tri-Valley, instead look at the broken communities that are within 30 miles of Tri-Valley. Millions of people are out of job and broke. They are hungry, and their children are hungry, and they have nothing to be hopeful for. Soon they will pour into Tri-Valley to mug, rob, murder, and pillage. You are dead wrong if you think your lovely governor will protect you or even cares about you when that happens. Wake up dear sheep, wake up.
It seems our leaders don’t know how to make a risk-based decision. The goals posts have been moved so they fit into “why something can’t be done”. This has become “we can’t” versus “yes, we can”.
Well, glad to see all the normal-brained self-obsessed suburban authoritarians are really thinking things through thoroughly while locked up in their oversized homes.
We have done our part to SIP and we are doing more harm now to our economic future. There is not enough monopoly $$ to pay for all those who continue to want to stay home. Here’s an idea… if you’re afraid to go out then YOU stay home and SIP and let the rest of us safely return to our lives/jobs. If essential businesses can be open safely then so can the rest of us. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
We still have the right to choose. I choose to OPEN.
“Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido offers a grim lesson in the next phase of the battle against COVID-19. It acted quickly and contained an early outbreak of the coronavirus with a 3-week lockdown. But, when the governor lifted restrictions, a second wave of infections hit even harder. Twenty-six days later, the island was forced back into lockdown.
A doctor who helped coordinate the government response says he wishes they’d done things differently. “Now I regret it, we should not have lifted the first state of emergency,” Dr. Kiyoshi Nagase, chairman of the Hokkaido Medical Association, tells TIME.”
If you think this SIP is bad if we face a 2nd time it will be longer and more severe.
Quarantine the sick and high risk.
And by the way….just last week the street sweeper went by…no water used, speeding through the neighborhoods throwing up the largest dust cloud possible. Spewing the virus up into the air to drop on all the surrounding area. Now, why would the street sweeper be considered essential????
Why are road construction people considered essential??? Throwing dust virus particles into the air while working on the roads???? Drive down 680…no construction dude is practicing safe distancing nor wearing masks.
There is a lot of construction work going on by our government….but all the private people are closed down? Why do they work and the rest of the people can not?
@Very Concerned, can you please cite your source of information? I’m curious as to the factual data on when the virus began to spread, as you’ve indicated knowledge on this subject in this comment: “The fact of the matter is that this virus started spreading in Bay Area in Early November. By early February, the overwhelming population of the people in Bay Area was already exposed to it.“ What is the source of this comment?
Thank you!
Don’t hold your breath, Diane. VC is just letting his inner blowhard out to get some air. Social media boards have become the domain of the loud and ill-informed.
It’s cathartic, I guess, to pretend to be an authority without putting in the time and effort to actually know something. On the Intertubes, everybody’s name is Fauci.
@Sue Thayer no breath holding here, having witnessed too many opinions on this forum misrepresented as fact. It shouldn’t surprise me but it still does, that someone would spout off in a way that others might actually take them at their “word” and risk exposure, thinking we have some type of “herd immunity.” People could die, how irresponsible.
As hard as this is on all of us, I prefer shelter in place to the alternative. Spreading the virus, and dying. The economy will recover, but death is final. Gradually reopening the state makes sense. The pandemic has separated the selfish from the unselfish, and the ignorant from the intelligent. Its sad.