Bay Area to ease shelter in place slowly as other counties and states rush to reopen

Across the Bay Area, coronavirus cases and deaths have reached a stubborn plateau after seven weeks of sheltering in place, and public health leaders in most counties say they are committed to a slow reopening of the economy — even as the state prepares to relax some restrictions and a handful of local businesses are pushing for a quicker recovery.

The Bay Area approached 9,000 cases on Tuesday, and last week the region saw a small uptick in the number of new cases from the previous week. Death reports have been slightly, but steadily, dropping week to week. But in individual counties, the pace of the outbreak has been undulating.

The sobering truth is that the Bay Area is still in the thick of the coronavirus pandemic, public health experts said. And if counties emerge too quickly from sheltering in place, they risk a resurgence of cases and an outbreak far more dramatic than the one narrowly avoided by early and aggressive social distancing orders.

“It’s understandable that people are getting a little frustrated. I think it’s because we’ve hit this plateau,” said Stephen Shortell, former dean of the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley. “People get restless, and they see on TV and social media what’s happening in other states that are opening. They need to be reminded: We’re not as bad off in California because we’ve had patience, discipline and leadership. We need to keep on trucking for a little bit longer.”

That message was repeated by several Bay Area health officers this week as Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that some parts of the state may be ready to relax stay-home restrictions as early as Friday, assuming they have measures in place to protect their communities.

The Bay Area, many health officers said, is not there yet. Several counties are beginning to release plans for reopening — but those are long-term, and much of the region is still weeks from allowing businesses to resume some normal operations.

But in Napa County — where case counts haven’t crossed 100 and only two deaths have been reported — the health officer said Tuesday that she plans to revise the local stay-home order this week to more closely match the somewhat looser restrictions in Newsom’s statewide directive. That could allow retail businesses to open for curbside sales as early as Friday.

The Sonoma County health officer also said Tuesday that he plans to align his local order with the state directive. The county has reported about 260 cases and three deaths.

On Monday, a few Napa businesses were already open in direct defiance of state and county orders, their owners insisting that the risk of infection for their staff and customers was low. By Tuesday, county officials had already told some to close again. The county public health department said it was aware of complaints about the businesses but had no further comment.

At Quent Cordair, an art gallery in downtown Napa, the owners set out masks at the front door for customers who hadn’t brought their own. About 60 people came by on Monday, said Linda Cordair.

“We had a good day,” she said. “There was a lot of local support, and people found items they wanted to take home with them.”

Cordair said she had dinner that night at Fumé Bistro, a neighborhood restaurant a few miles from her shop that also defied the local order.

“Napa County has not supported numbers and statistics for us to remain closed,” said Terry Latson, the owner of Fumé, where staff handed out paper napkins instead of the usual cloth and cleared out half the tables to create more distance between customers. “We have super, super low statistics and instances and deaths, too. So we decided to push the envelope a little bit.

“We feel like if you’re not comfortable, please wait. But if you’re ready to come in, then we’d like to be here to support you and for you to support us,” Latson said.

In Northern California, several rural counties have allowed business to resume, in violation of state mandates. Restaurants and hair salons in Yuba and Sutter counties are already open again, and the Yuba Sutter Mall planned to let in customers as early as Wednesday.

Newsom on Tuesday chided those counties for moving too fast and risking the health of their own communities and the rest of the state. “They’re making a big mistake, and they’re putting their public at risk. They’re putting our progress at risk,” Newsom said at his daily briefing.

Last week, California reported its first drop in the weekly death toll since the outbreak began in early March — an important marker of the progress made so far, infectious disease experts said. But the state is still reporting wide fluctuations in case counts day to day. More than 2,300 people have died, including more than 80 deaths reported on Tuesday.

Case reports in the Bay Area and the rest of the state climb and fall based on a number of factors — a cluster of cases in a single nursing home, for example, or a batch of tests results released at once. As counties attempt to increase testing, public health officials said they expect small increases in new cases too. Eventually those should stabilize.

It’s unlikely, though, that the Bay Area will see zero new cases anytime soon — a goal that a few months ago seemed attainable. The virus is simply too widespread — not only in the region, but across the state and country. As long as there are hot spots in other parts of the United States, it will be impossible to fully contain the outbreak, infectious disease experts said.

“The Bay Area is behaving very much like what one would expect in terms of slight undulations, ups and downs, but we’re not going to have these tremendous peaks. I think this is what we can expect now for the next few months,” said John Swartzberg, a UC Berkeley infectious disease expert. “From the perspective of the virus, it has plenty of susceptible people to infect.”

Swartzberg and others noted that as the state and counties loosen some restrictions, further small jumps in cases can be expected. The more people interact, after all, the more opportunity the virus has to spread. That’s why it’s important that counties move slowly to reopen, so they can gauge the impact of any new easing of restrictions.

That’s already happening as some counties across the state have moved to reopen parks and beaches. In the Bay Area, six counties this week allowed construction to resume, along with a few outdoor-only businesses. Public health officials will carefully watch local statistics over the next two weeks to see if those changes result in more cases.

“This more controlled relaxation of the restrictions, I think it’s reasonable,” said Lee Riley, a UC Berkeley infectious disease expert. “And if we start seeing an uptick again, we’ll know which businesses are at risk and we can assess that. We can take more precautions.”