Daily hospitalizations due to COVID-19 and the percentage of COVID-19 tests returning positive remained steady or fell slightly in Contra Costa County during early August.
Given the improvement, Contra Costa County today made small changes to its social distancing health order to allow certain business sectors to begin operating again outdoors.
The changes align Contra Costa’s policy with state health guidelines:
- Personal care services that do not involve close contact with the face, such as nail salons and massage, may begin operating outdoors in accordance with the state-issued industry guidelines and checklist.
- Gyms and fitness centers may begin operating outdoors in accordance with their own state guidelines and checklist.
- Hotels and short-term rentals in the county may open for personal or recreational travel, not just for essential business purposes.
These updates to the health order are effective Friday, August 28.
Hair salons and barbers have already been permitted to perform limited work outdoors in the county, with no reported outbreaks.
“Based on what we are able to see, we can be cautiously optimistic that there is a gradual downward trend in county cases, testing positivity rates and hospitalizations,” said Dr. Chris Farnitano, county health officer. “We need everyone to understand this is a reason to keep up what we are doing and not let down our guards.”
The seven-day rolling average number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in Contra Costa dropped slightly, from 103 on Aug. 5 to 96 on Aug. 24. The average percentage of tests administered in the county that come back positive, meanwhile, has fallen from 8.8% on Aug. 6 to 7.4% on Aug. 24.
Contra Costa County remains on the California Department of Public Health’s county monitoring list.
.
Why isn’t Gov. Newsom talking about “herd immunity” anymore?
.
Because nobody’s listening to him
The jig is up.
Dems overplayed their hand, and they know it.
With gyms being able to operate outdoors, will rims on basketball courts be put back up?
So basically nothing has changed and we are still help hostage, complete with mouth coverings and hands tied. Robbing us of our money, health, and freedom
How about unchaining the swings at the parks. Let the kids play !
Interesting because many nail salons have already been set up outside! As well as gyms holding classes outside…..so is this CYA by the county?
So I noticed this too… Nails and gyms have been outside for a few weeks at least. I thought that was already in play.
Agreed! know many nail places and gyms holding stuff outside. Thought this was already in place?
The county is still claiming that the numbers from the state are not valid. I don’t see how anyone can make valid fact/science based decisions.
“Daily hospitalizations due to COVID-19 and the percentage of COVID-19 tests returning positive remained steady or fell slightly in Contra Costa County during early August.”
Eyeroll – The county started reporting the hospitalization numbers on 3/21/2020 with 11 in the hospital. This climbed to 44 on 4/13 and then started dropping, hitting 9 on 5/21. It started climbing and hit a peak of 110 on 7/30. Since then it’s been running in the mid to high nineties.
Let’s look at the big picture. Hospitalizations are just below the all time high. 95 people in the hospital is the new normal?
The county did not mention new cases per day. This remained under 30 per day until 6/6/2020 and then started climbing. It hit 154 per day by 7/10. Something got overwhelmed and the numbers have not been valid since then. While we know the numbers are not valid I’m pretty certain there are more than 100 new cases per day.
Again, look at the big picture. Is over 100 new cases per day of a very contagious disease the new normal?
Back in May the Antioch city council removed a guy from the planning commission for saying on one of his personal social media accounts that we should allow nature to take its course. It seems that our health department has come to the same conclusion. Will the guy get reinstated to the planning commission or are you simply not allowed to point out that the emperor has no clothes on?
@WC Resident~I enjoyed reading your commentary and agree that the data is convoluted! I postulate that this all began when on 7/10 (the date you saw the data rise to 154 per day) the CDC was no longer the primary for data reporting to (which has caused much confusion/use of outdated technology systems) and it was mandated that all Covid-19 data be sent to the Health and Human Service…this, combined with 2-3 week turnaround on testing is sure a cluster fest of data.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02478-z
Thank you Sancho Panza. I had forgotten about the switch from the CDC and so looked into that a bit. Apparently a significant donation to the Trump campaign lead the administration to award a contract to TeleTracking Technologies. That company had been in the business of supplying patient tracking software to hospitals.
I learned that hospitals had been signing into a CDC web portal and manually entering data about COVID-19 patients. A few days before July 10th the hospitals were told to instead sign into a web portal on the TeleTracking web site and to enter the data there. It’s still manual data entry. The CDC web form had 70 fields and the TeleTracking version expands this to 129 fields. TeleTracking is now marketing reports based on the data they are collecting.
I’m wondering if some hospitals or hospital chains are refusing to use the TeleTracking portal and that’s causing the data glitch.
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/29/896645314/irregularities-in-covid-reporting-contract-award-process-raises-new-questions
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02231-6
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/us/politics/teletracking-technologies-coronavirus-senators.html
They can…. but the air quality is so awful no one can breath.
Are they gonna move the weights in and out everyday???
no showers for you. Gyms need to discount prices, and so when it rains or it’s over 100 degrees?????
Gavin is genius and never worked out a day in his life!
Imagine Gavin taking shower. There would be a massive oil sick, slip city baby.
@russ – Moving the weights is exactly what they are doing at a local Crossfit.
They installed canopies in the parking lot. One of Crossfit’s things is what they call the Workout of the Day or WOD. Each day they move the WOD stuff needed for that day out into the parking lot. Carrying the stuff around become part of the exercise program. I don’t think Crossfit uses those large machines with weights, cables, and pulleys meaning their stuff is fairly portable.
For pullups they use bars that are mounted in the roll-up garage doors.
I have not paid attention to see if and how they handle wiping down or sanitizing equipment when they switch from one person to another.
I hope the city of WC removes the fencing they recently installed around little kids play area at Walden and possibly other parks. Prior to the fencing being put up a week or so ago these areas had been very popular with many people using them since July 1st. They had figured out that COVID-19 is not a civilization killer and ignored the “Closed for COVID-19” signs.
Over 1800 children in cc county now have it, most in the last month why is no one talking or worried about this?
Stop with the politics propaganda Mo.
Researchers have been looking at the tests, particularly the PRC which too often gives false positive. The bottom line may be if you don’t have the symptoms you don’t have Covid.
It’s interesting how they convey this message as being a new concession. I have seen some Gyms and Nail salons already operate outside in this county. Not many gyms have the space outside to do this, same for nail salons, so it is almost a joke to allow this. It has been 6 months without revenue for these businesses, it is not acceptable. I am all for the mask wearing, I am a total liberal and believe this is a real threat to our health, but you cannot close businesses for 6 months. Having to chose between health and the economy is a false choice. As long as you practice social distancing and act responsibly, they should let them open their facilities.