San Diego Removed From State Watch List; Schools Could Open Sept. 1

Speaker 1: 00:00 Facing the triple threat of a statewide heat wave, 23 major wildfires and the ongoing COVID pandemic governor Newsome used today's update to address all those challenges. Another flex alert will be in place from two to 9:00 PM. Today. Residents are urged to reduce energy usage during that time to prevent the need for rolling blackouts. The governor says today may be the last day. This week that energy resources are stretched. So thin Newsome also reported that a total of 367 known fires are burning across the state. 23 of those are characterized as major fires. The worst of those fire complexes burning in San Mateo and Napa and Sonoma counties in Northern California, Speaker 2: 00:46 Putting everything we have on these fires, they're stretched all across the state of California. Uh, and we're now getting the support of some of our partners in the Western United States. And for that again, we're very grateful. Speaker 1: 01:02 And in California's pandemic response, the governor acknowledged that San Diego is now off the state's monitoring watch list. He says, it looks likely that San Francisco will be able to get off the watch list tomorrow. Now, San Diego was officially removed Tuesday from that watch list fewer than 100 cases per 100,000 residents have been recorded in San Diego for more than three consecutive days, which is one of the key metrics to getting off the list. Now, another countdown begins to see if the County can maintain those lower numbers for the next two weeks. If it does, schools may be able to reopen for in-person classes, if adequate safety measures are in place, but when, and if businesses and other indoor activities might be able to open up again, it's still up in the air. Joining me is KPBS health reporter Taran mento, Taran. Welcome to the show. Speaker 1: 01:56 Thanks so much, Marine. There seems to be a lot of confusion about being on the watch list off the watch list. Could you give us some brief background about this watch list and how San Diego got on it in the first place? Right? So the state tracks, uh, metrics, and if you go above, you know, a threshold that they set for some of those metrics and you get placed on the watch list. And so the metric we crossed was new cases of coronavirus per 100,000 residents. So that state wants us to keep that at 100 per 100,000 or below, we went above that early July. We got placed on this watch list when you get placed on a watch list that triggers some additional restrictions. So a lot of businesses were not allowed to operate indoors. And then later the governor added more businesses to that list. But since we've had our case rate come down, we dipped below it. And then we held there for three days. And that's what got us off. The watch list is San Diego. One of the few counties that have been able to get off the watch list, correct? We are the second County to get off of Speaker 3: 03:00 The watch list. Santa Cruz County was the first they got off the watch list on Friday, as you mentioned, we got off the watch list yesterday. However, the County had been reporting that our case rate was below the threshold, um, and met the criteria last Friday. But because of that reporting backlog that we heard at the state level, the state reviewed our calculations and found some backlog positives that we weren't able to account for it. Cause we didn't know about them yet. And then put those into the calculation and told us that, you know, our case rate wasn't, um, at the levels that we thought until finally this week, just yesterday, if Speaker 1: 03:38 During this 14 day waiting period that I mentioned in the opening remarks, the rate per 100,000 goes up, do we go back on the watch list? Speaker 3: 03:48 So you have to be above the threshold above that metric for three consecutive days to get on the watch list. So, um, we don't know if rules will change for counties that were previously off the watch list. Maybe it's only one day or two days. We don't know what's going to happen. So we're still operating under the assumption that it's going to be the same criteria as it was before. So if we cross over the cases per 100,000 threshold for three consecutive days, and that should land us back on the watch list, but we'll be watching closely from what the state puts out in terms of reopening guidelines, to see if there's any more information in there that would apply to counties that have previously been on a watch list. Speaker 1: 04:27 Now, after this 14 day waiting period in theory, schools could reopen, but I believe school districts don't have to reopen for in-person classes, even if the state gives the okay, isn't that right? Speaker 3: 04:40 Correct. They just have the ability to make the decision. According to the state. Now each individual district would be looking at their own, uh, whatever metrics they would like to use to determine if they should reopen San Diego unified specifically said, you know, one of those would be looking at the amount of community outbreaks reported in the last week that something that the County tracks to determine if it wants to implement any restrictions. And so San Diego unified is saying, yes, we've met the state's criteria, but now we're going to look at what the county's criteria would be. And we're going to adopt some of those metrics to dictate what we do. What about others? Speaker 1: 05:16 There are indoor activities like businesses, churches, restaurants, what does getting off the watch list mean for those reopenings? Speaker 3: 05:23 That is something that all of the operators of those establishments would like to know. Essentially we should be getting it should mean that they can reopen and reconduct indoor operations. The state still has to provide that guidance. They provided guidance early on when we first reopened, but that guidance does not apply after this kind of second round of, of indoor operation closure. So we're still waiting for the state to provide that to us, even though Speaker 1: 05:53 We've been getting good news about the counties metrics, hundreds of people a day Speaker 3: 05:58 Are still testing positive and the death count continues to go up. Can you give us an idea about yesterday's figures 200, two more people tested positive? And that brings us up to more than 35,000 cases overall in the County, but two Oh two is on the lower end of daily case counts that we've seen reported, um, late, you know, late July. So things are improving, but overall hospitalizations, which is a key indicator. Those are also going down. So we see that people are not getting so severely sick, that they need to go to the hospital, which is a good indication that, um, that's not impacting those coronavirus. Doesn't have as great of a spread or impact in the County. So that's a positive sign, but you know, we had more people, seven additional people reported who died in the County yesterday. Our County officials concerned about reopening too soon. Speaker 3: 06:47 Yes. You know, we've heard supervisor Nathan Fletcher, who said, the last thing we want to see is this reopening than shut down. This kind of Seesaw effect. And also dr. Wilma, when our County public health officer, she indicated as well, they don't want to continue with this back and forth. They want to implement a reopening plan that keeps us off the watch list keeps case counts low and really monitors and contains the spread of this virus. So that's why we're really looking forward to some specifics from the County. Once we get off the watch list, certain restrictions have been lifted lifted. Once we get the guidance from the state, what's going to happen with how the County moves forward to further ensure that we stay within these metrics. I've been speaking with KPBS health reporter, Taren, mento, and Taran. Thank you. Thank you.