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SAN JOSE – After months of having some of the state’s toughest COVID-19 stop rules, Santa Clara County is abandoning its stand-alone approach and moving closer to the California mainstream, due to the drop virus cases and increased vaccinations.
Public health officials said they were easing restrictions on outdoor activities – including youth sports, as previously announced – from Friday. And when the county moves to state red for reopening, which is expected to happen on Wednesday, it will allow indoor meals and some gatherings to return, with capacity and distance limits.
The planned restart of indoor catering – at 25% capacity – was good news for Kostas Perakis, who runs Tasso’s family-friendly restaurant and bar on the Southwest Expressway in San Jose.
“We will open up and go back to normal life. Love it, ”Perakis said on Friday.
Like many restaurateurs, Perakis tried to keep afloat with take-out and alfresco dining, but said spending on outdoor tents, heaters, and declining customer traffic still meant a drop in 70%. He added that there was no way to overstate the difference the meals inside made for him.
“People like safety and don’t like being outside in the cold,” he says.
The changes were announced amid a wider rollout of vaccinations as well as declining case and hospitalization rates. They are also signaling a change with the county aligning closer to state coronavirus guidelines: Critics have for months been denouncing county leaders and its health official, Dr Sara Cody, for putting in implement stricter rules than other counties.
“With vaccinations now reaching the community more broadly, including more than half of those aged 65 and over, we are making significant strides in protecting our most vulnerable members of the community,” Cody said in a statement. “As things improve, it is always important that everyone continues to practice basic prevention measures: covering their faces, keeping the company out of the way, and doing as much activity as possible at home. outside.”
The county’s new guidelines for outdoor gatherings require that a person wear a face mask only if they are within six feet of a person outside of their home. Additionally, people can now sing at outdoor gatherings without covering their faces as long as they stay six feet away from others.
A county statement to that news agency on Friday added that officials “have determined that the benefits of expanding permitted outdoor activities, where the risk of transmission is much lower, outweighed the risks.”
Most youth sports are also allowed to resume, with the county repealing its rules in favor of state guidelines released late last week that allow high-contact outdoor sports to be played in any location. which county with a per capita case rate less than 14 per 100,000. residents. Santa Clara County said Monday it would follow the state’s new rules.
With 5,525 new cases reported Thursday, according to data compiled by this news agency, the California average over the past week has fallen to its lowest point since the first week of November, while the number of Californians hospitalized with COVID -19 fell below 6000 for the first time since before Thanksgiving.
Gov. Gavin Newsom told a press conference in Fresno on Friday that the state now receives about 1.6 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines each week from the Biden administration, and that 8.24 million vaccines had been administered in California on Friday. .
He expects vaccination rates to continue to rise with the planned approval of a Johnson and Johnson vaccine that represents new flexibility in vaccinations, given that it only consists of a single injection – current vaccines require two doses three to four weeks apart – and do not need special refrigeration.
Still, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, continued to be diligent in light of the increase in the number of national cases over the past three days, prompting her to fear that earnings in countries such as California do not stagnate. if restrictions are relaxed and new, more contagious virus variants continue to spread.
“We may be done with the virus,” Walensky said at a White House press briefing on Friday, “but it is clear that the virus is not over with us.”
Editors Evan Webeck, Laurence Miedema and Associated Press contributed to this report.
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