Good news came to Santa Cruz County on Monday, as Gov. Gavin Newsom announced officials there may begin reopening indoor gyms, hair salons and other businesses.
Based on its improving coronavirus transmission and hospitalization statistics, Santa Cruz County has been removed from the roster no one wants to be on: The state’s “county monitoring list.” Counties that land on that list must adhere to more restrictive shelter-in-place rules.
“This is a dynamic list,” Newsom said. “People come on, people come off. The numbers shift every single week.”
Currently, 42 of the state’s 58 counties are on the monitoring list, including Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. That includes five new additions Newsom announced Monday: Amador, Mendocino, Inyo, Calaveras and Sierra counties.
But that number may drop to 41 soon: San Diego County also has been improving, Newsom said, and he expects to remove it from the watch list Tuesday.
“We want to continue to see progress, not just in San Diego, but all across the state,” Newsom said.
The changes in the watch list reflect new data entered as California worked its way through a massive backlog of nearly 300,000 tests. The backlog was cleared Friday, Newsom said, and some counties were added to the list retroactively to reflect earlier cases that were only recently counted.
Counties on the watch list for 3 consecutive days must shut down all indoor gyms, places of worship, non-essential offices, nail salons, hair salons and shopping malls.
But once a county is taken off the list, it’s up to local officials to decide which sectors to open when.
As a state, California seems to continue to move in the right direction, Newsom said Monday. He reported 6,469 new cases from Sunday, compared to a seven-day average of 9,446.
“Those case numbers are high, but they are trending in the right direction,” he said.
The number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 has dropped 21% over the past two weeks, and the number of people in the ICU has dropped 16%, he said. COVID-19 patients fill 7% of the state’s hospital beds.
