How is Sonoma County Really Doing?
- fionacsweet
- Sep 25, 2020
- 2 min read
As I'm sure many of us know by now, the Sonoma County Board of Education officially called distance learning to extend through the end of Semester 1. They were earlier hoping that we would be able to go back with a hybrid schedule in Quarter 2.
So how is Sonoma County doing in terms of the coronavirus? Well, we are one of the last two Bay Area counties stuck in the most restrictive tier of California's coronavirus reopening plan, so that's not too good. But, I have good news.
We could meet state benchmarks as soon as next week that would pull us up from our purple tier (indicates "widespread" transmission) to the red tier (indicates "substantial" transmission). This change would allow us to open up restaurants, fitness centers, movie theater, and dance studios to let people back inside up to 50% of capacity.
Our county's public health officer, Dr. Sundari Mase, believes that one reason for our placement in the purple tier is that our county is home to tourism, agriculture, and other industries.
She also said that we are getting close to meeting 2 benchmarks that would allow us to advance. We must have seven or fewer new cases each day per 100,000 residents and a positivity rate of less than 8%. We currently have 8.3 new cases daily per 100,000 residents and a positivity rate of 4.6% (but we need to meet both benchmarks to advance). This advancement may happen as early as Tuesday, when the state does its weekly county assessments. After that, we must continue to meet those requirements for 2 consecutive weeks before we officially advance. Schools would still be prohibited from reopening classrooms until late October at the earliest.
So, we are almost there! I am excited to see what happens on Tuesday - hopefully we make it to the red tier! Have a great weekend!
Comments