Sacramento County Meets New Criteria To Relax Stay-At-Home Order, Will Submit To State For Approval
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — Governor Newsom announced new guidelines Monday that would allow the majority of California counties to relax stay-at-home orders.
"We are moving forward to allow some of the larger counties to continue to make progress deeper into phase 2 and to do so effective immediately but on their own pace and I mean effectively immediately, meaning the guidelines are out there and the processes are in place," said Newsom during his daily press conference Monday.
Newsom estimated 53 of 58 counties could meet the new criteria.
The changes eliminate requirements that a county has to have zero deaths and no more than one case per 10,000 residents over 14 days.
Counties no longer will have to meet a threshold for deaths. They can have up to 25 cases per 100,000 residents or no higher than an 8% positive rate among people tested for the virus.
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"All of our statistics are heading down, which is the correct way they want to go," said Dr. Peter Beilenson, Director of Sacramento County's Department of Health Services.
Dr. Beilenson says hospitalization rates have also gone down, further allowing the county to decide when to reopen with restrictions upon approval.
"In all the hospitals in the county, there are a total of 15 people with COVID, so that's an example of how the epidemiological data has gone down," he said.
Joel Quiggin works at Mike's Camera in Sacramento. He's ready for the potential modifications to retail ahead.
"How we handle it is customer walks up to the store and ask, you know, I have an employee here asking them what they would like to come in for," Quiggin said. "It's very important for us to you know get back to how we used to be or as close and we could be."
