San Luis Obispo County tentatively approved a wider reopening next week

Southern California is slowly emerging from a very dark and devastating winter wave of coronavirus and appears to be headed for a wider reopening in the coming weeks. Yesterday, state officials announced a slew of further advances in counties to less restrictive levels, paving the way for things like increasing restaurant capacity, returning some indoor gyms, reopening of shopping center food courts, and more. And while none of the five counties officially cleared to reopen this week were in Southern California (boo, NorCal), the state offered a “preview” list of seven other counties that could go red. lower next week.

Among those on the “sneak peek” list is San Luis Obispo County, on the central coast, long a popular weekend destination for Angelenos looking to embrace wine country and coastal life. . Due to the county’s undulating geography and much lower population density, the county has fared far better than even its neighboring neighbors like Santa Barbara and Ventura counties in containing COVID-19.

If the current rate of SLO cases continues, it should be able to enter the new lower red level by next Tuesday. Local officials are not willing to take the risks, however, and are asking more county residents to get tested this week in order to expand the range of data in hopes of further reducing the overall test positivity rate. Currently, the county’s adjusted case rate is 9.4 per 100,000, just above the threshold of seven cases per 100,000 needed for a new reopening.

So where does that leave other counties close to Los Angeles like Kern, Riverside, Santa Barbara, and Orange? None of them appear on the state’s slated reopening list for the coming week, but several counties could drop 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 population, with a test positivity rate of 5.4 percent; Los Angeles County has 12.3 cases per 100,000 people and a test positivity rate of 5.1%. Both parameters are essential for counties to benefit from greater reopening privileges by state public health officials. The thresholds for each color coded level are shown below.

It has become increasingly clear to many public health experts that the deadly winter outbreak of COVID-19 in southern California has dramatically prepared the region for a wide reopening in the spring, in part because so many people unfortunately contracted the virus. Just yesterday, LA County passed 20,000 coronavirus deaths. Add to that the continued pressure for vaccinations in LA County, and it’s easy to see why cases have dropped so precipitously lately. Add to that the recent confirmation that workers in restaurants and other food industries will be a priority for vaccines starting March 1, and there is certainly reason for limited optimism within the hospitality industry in general.

However, it is important to note that the county’s vaccination efforts have been far from homogeneous, as many mass vaccination sites have had to become obscure for lack of vaccines, and the media have widely reported an uneven distribution of vaccines that left many people of color behind. All of this to say that Los Angeles has a long way to go before it returns to ‘normal’, although now it’s evident in the restaurant industry and beyond that ‘normal’ does ‘doesn’t exist anymore.

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