Newsom Orders Closure Of Indoor Activity At Gyms, Salons, Churches

Speaker 1: 00:00 San Diego was forced to take a step back on Monday as governor Gavin Newsome ordered all indoor operations in gyms, houses of worship non-critical office businesses, hair salons, and personal care services to close. Once again, the move was prompted by a continuing increase in COVID-19 cases. The overall number of cases in San Diego County passed the 20,000 Mark on Monday as cases spike the need for testing increases, but San Diego health officials also had some bad news on that topic. Yesterday, San Diego's testing capacity is decreasing because of an overburden supply chain. The result County testing will be reserved for people who have symptoms and not for anyone who wants one. Joining me is KPBS health reporter, Taran, mento, and Taryn. Welcome to the program. Thanks Maureen. Now, San Diego, wasn't the only County in California that had to take a step back and reopening how much of the state was also impacted. Speaker 1: 01:02 Yeah, it's more than three quarters of the state's population. About 80%. There's about 29 counties give or take a few as more might be added, but all of the counties in Southern California, LA orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, we're all on there. How are our County officials responding to the governor's order? Well, yesterday's a news conference supervisor, Nathan Fletcher acknowledged the hardship that these businesses are experiencing. You know, they were only just recently allowed to reopen. After months of shutdown probably had to spend a lot of money getting these safety measures in place to be able to open safely. And now they're being closed down again. So he, he acknowledged that it is a hardship, but he felt it was necessary because if we take these measures now to protect public health, it could also protect our county's fiscal health in the long run. Speaker 2: 01:53 Uh, rest assured I don't believe that anyone takes any of these steps lightly. Uh, and it is with a great sense of understanding that if we don't retain control of the spread of coronavirus, it threatens the entirety of our economy. Uh, and so these are unfortunate steps, uh, steps that we're certainly gonna have a negative economic impact on your business. Uh, but the things that the state of California believes we must do in order to reign in control of the spread, uh, so that we can hopefully resume and be in a good position. Moving forward, Speaker 1: 02:21 Supervisor Jim Desmond has been a vocal opponent to the shutdown orders. Um, he was very against it. It's another round of shutdowns and, and was critical because he said, you know, hospitalizations and see new County has not been increasing, even though the governor has been saying statewide, they've been increasing. And this is kind of the issue because shutdown orders, uh, from Fletcher's perspective are intended to prevent the virus from spreading so much that we are overwhelming our healthcare system with hospitalization. So Fletcher did acknowledge that sometimes these shut down orders are coming before they're painfully obvious what has to happen before these closures can reversed. So in San Diego County, we have to significantly reduce the spread, the community spread that's the trigger or the metric that the state is tracking that San Diego County has been flagged for. It's our case rate. So the state wants case rates to be, you know, no more than 100 per 100,000 residents. Speaker 1: 03:18 San Diego is about one, one 37 per 100,000. So we would have to significantly reduce the spread of infections in the community in order to, um, for the state to reevaluate and lift these restrictions. But right now, as all we know is that they are there in place indefinitely previously, when we just had that first round of closures was supposed to be after three weeks, we'll reassess. All we know now at this point is that it's indefinitely. Are we back in this situation with a limited number of COVID tests, right? This goes back to those supply chain issues that we heard about, you know, way early in the pandemic, because we are seeing cases, uh, surge, not just in senior County, not just in California, but in a couple of other key States in the country, you know, Texas, Arizona, and Florida, or some of those that have been mentioned when you have more people testing positive, you have more people that are seeking test. Speaker 1: 04:09 Um, there's more demand. And then that means that resources become limited as more States and jurisdictions are trying to meet this demand because we've also scaled up our testing. So we've have a greater demand. We have a larger volume of testing that was being offered, but a greater need and therefore limited resources being distributed across these States where we're seeing surges. And one of you heard, what has it been like in recent days for people trying to get tested at County sites here in San Diego, the director of health and human services, Nick meshy on himself has said, some people have had to wait five to seven days just to get an appointment. Um, you know, and then some people are talking about five to seven days longer to get results. You're talking about from the time you get tested at the time that you know, whether you have the virus to be about two weeks. Speaker 1: 04:59 And I know I spoke to a local protest organizer who actually went to not a County cause I went to CVS and it took 11 days, including weekends, 11 days to get her results back. This has being kind of a, a lag affecting, not just County sites, but other sites as well. What exactly are the new guidelines for getting a County test? Right. So one of the ways that the County is trying to address this as limiting, um, those individuals who can sign up for an appointment at the counties, um, testing sites. And so that's going to be limited to symptomatic people. Previously, people could get a test no matter what their symptoms were, but now it's lists, um, limited to symptomatic individuals and high risk people. So people who are asymptomatic, but may work in a healthcare setting or may have a chronic disease, or may be in a nursing care and nursing facility where we we've known a lot of outbreaks to, to be linked back to. I've been speaking with KPBS health reporter, Taren, mento, and Taran. Thank you. Thanks Maureen.