Santa Cruz County off state’s Watch List
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (KION)
Santa Cruz County was pulled off the state's watch list on Friday. Santa Cruz becomes the first county in the larger Bay Area to be taken off the list.
The announcement was made during Governor Gavin Newsom's press conference Monday afternoon.
The state's COVID-19 website now shows the county of Santa Cruz in blue. The most recent information shows there are 104.7 cases per 100,000 people. Overall there are 1,449 confirmed cases, with 287 new cases reported.
Santa Cruz County experienced a sharp upward trend in case rate in early July after having had success in "flattening the curve" for months.
After 14 days schools may reopen to in-person learning should all other criteria be met. However, county health officer Dr. Gail Newel said the county still doesn't have the testing capacity for schools to re-open safely.
“The re-opening guidelines, which are a legal mandate from the state, require us to be able to test every staff and faculty member every two months starting with the opening of school," Newel said. "We do not have those kinds of resources yet.”
The County Office of Education Superintendent Dr. Faris Sabbah agrees and says they're in the process of hiring their own contact tracers for schools.
"We’re doing every thing we can to bring up that capacity so it will allow us to open up in a safe manner, but it's really hard to tell when we’re going to get to that point,” Sabbah said.
If Santa Cruz stays off the monitoring list until August 28, it's still possible more parts of the economy could re-open, but only if the state health officer gives approval.
“I would anticipate--this is no promise: we would see hair salons, nail salons, personal services back indoors, some services like tattoos, piercing and fitness centers,” Newel said.
Newel said under the guidance of the new state health officer the Governor may announce in the next week an easing of some restrictions for counties not on the monitoring list.
