Movie Theaters, Gyms And Museums Among Businesses Set To Reopen In San Diego

Speaker 1: 00:00 The announcement on the state's COVID-19 website was surprising and good news for many San Diego County business owners, restaurants, gyms, hair salons, places of worship malls and movie theaters can reopen indoors with restrictions that's because the spread of Corona virus has slowed here compared with most California counties. Joining me to discuss the new reopening plan is dr. Mark Sawyer, infectious disease expert at radius children's hospital and professor of clinical pediatrics at UC San Diego. Dr. Sawyer, welcome to the program. It's great to join you. Well, the state has rolled out a new system, replacing the state's COVID-19 watch list with a four tiered color coded approach with purple for widespread restrictions and yellow for minimal restrictions. Here's governor Gavin Newsome. Speaker 2: 00:47 We don't put up green because we don't believe that there is a green light just says, go back to the way things were or back to a pre pandemic mindset. Speaker 1: 00:59 And San Diego County is in the red or second worst tier meaning viral activity here remains quote, substantial. Still most businesses in the County can reopen with restrictions, dr. Sawyer, what do you make of this approach? Well, I think I'm cautiously optimistic that, that this is going to work. I hope people have gotten the message that this will only work if we are very compliant with wearing masks and staying socially distanced from other people. If we try to go back to business as usual, we will inevitably see a rebound of cases and be shoved back into the purple category. And the new tiered system relies on two indicators, case rate and positivity rate yet when it comes to hospitalizations and deaths, the state as a whole is still above the springtime plateau. So you wonder if it makes sense to, uh, move forward with a reopening, even as hospitalizations and deaths remain this high. Speaker 1: 01:55 Yeah, I mean, there's so many metrics you can look at and there's probably no single right answer to when to reopen and how to reopen this strikes me as a very reasonable approach. Uh, as you may be pointing out these businesses that are reopening are reopening with a very reduced number of clients or, or, or, uh, customers, which should help with the social distancing, but we'll find out this, this is basically another attempt to open things up this time more gradually, and let's hope it works well. Right. And, uh, unfortunately around Memorial day we had a similar, uh, open up and it didn't work last time. Um, are you confident that the public has learned its lesson, as we say, and, and maybe we'll be a little more diligent as individuals I'm cautiously optimistic about this. You know, we've had another, a few months since then people have seen what happens, not only in the United States, but around the world. If you get too relaxed. On the other hand, they've seen what happens in other countries when they, it well, and people are compliant with wearing masks and distancing. Many countries are, are pretty much back to business and we're hoping that this is going to help us get there. Speaker 3: 03:09 Now, San Diego County public health officer, dr. Wilma Wooten can decide to make the new state requirements more restrictive than what we've heard out of Sacramento. At the end of last week and supervisor Nathan Fletcher, he believes the County should take a more cautious approach. He's concerned because we had that early summer holiday Memorial day. And then we saw a surge in June after that. And now we're coming up on, on labor day. Do you think the state might have a just held off until after this holiday? Speaker 1: 03:38 Well, I don't know if there's ever a great time to take this step. I think, again, particularly over the holiday, people need to keep in mind that the two secret ingredients here are wearing a mask and distancing from other people. So if you're having a labor day picnic, uh, you need to be very careful about that and how many people you involve. So if we get too relaxed about social distancing, we're going to be back where we were at Memorial day. Speaker 3: 04:07 Of course, as we're talking, messaging is critical here and what the public is thinking and doing president Trump retweeted a distorted message from a far right website over the weekend saying the real death toll from COVID-19 is just 9,000 nationally, not the CDC official 183,000, because most dying from the virus had underlying conditions. How does muddled messaging from the president or other leaders impact what the public health officials are trying to get across on the County level? Speaker 1: 04:36 Well, I think it's crucial. I think it's crucial that we all have the same message. And, and I think that the evidence, the scientific evidence is very clear that masks work. It's very clear that this is a serious disease. It's very clear who is at risk for this disease. And in order to protect those people, we all need to pitch in and do the right thing, which is to wear masks and stay away from other people as much as possible. Speaker 3: 05:03 Now, in just a few weeks, the weather's going to turn cooler, especially in many other parts of the country. That means a lot of people going back in doors, are we looking at a double whammy because that also means flu season's coming up. I wonder as a, as a lay person, I wonder, is there a concern about, uh, you know, the flu and the COVID a virus still here, or because of what we're doing with masking and distancing and washing hands, et cetera, might that hold down the flu this year? Cause it's a virus after all as well. Speaker 1: 05:32 Yeah. That's a great question. Uh, back to your first comment about people going indoors. We, the other thing that's very clear from the scientific evidence is that outdoors is a much better environment and much safer environment. So we're somewhat fortunate here in San Diego, we can continue to do a lot of things, outdoors, even things that we normally would do indoors even into the winter. And I would encourage people to about that and do that as much as possible. Any indoor environment is going to be at increased risk because there's decreased air circulation. And that's the environment in which the virus spreads easily. Now we're all concerned about influenza, which will inevitably hit San Diego somewhere between November and February, as it does every year. And, you know, particularly if it's a severe flu season, we are going to again, be in a situation where we have to worry about healthcare resources. Speaker 1: 06:30 Do we have enough hospital beds and ventilators to take care of everybody? I'm hopeful that this will motivate people to get their influenza vaccine. Those vaccines are already starting to become available in the community. So now is the time to go out and get a flu shot, and that will decrease your chance of getting influenza and also help with the overall burden in the community. I am a little bit optimistic that social distancing and masks are going to impact or reduce the rate of influenza as well. We saw that back in the spring, we were still having influenza in San Diego. And when we went into lockdown, the cases dramatically decreased. So hopefully it won't be a severe flu season because people are wearing masks and staying distanced. Speaker 3: 07:16 Last question I want to ask you was about schools in the County. They're expected to get a green light to reopen tomorrow. Uh, what will you be paying attention to as the region continues to move forward with reopening, especially with schools? Speaker 1: 07:29 Well, that's just one other element of this reopening process. The schools, I know have been very careful in planning how to do this as safely as possible, but we're not really going to know whether that has a big impact on the rates of, of SARS Coby too, or not until it happens. So same messages in schools where masks stay socially distance. Obviously don't send your children to school if they're sick, uh, and keep them protected at home as well. By following the same measures Speaker 3: 08:02 I've been speaking with dr. Mark Sawyer, infectious disease expert at radius children's hospital. Thanks very much for joining. Speaker 1: 08:08 Yes, no, it was great to join you. Thanks.