Most big California counties are not close to meeting Gov. Gavin Newsom's strict standards that would allow a wider reopening of the economy, including dine-in restaurants and shopping malls, a Los Angeles Times data analysis found.
Newsom announced this week a series of benchmarks each of California's 58 counties would need to reach to significantly reopen faster than the statewide standard. Can the county show that people have stopped dying from the coronavirus? Have new cases fallen to a manageable level? Can officials adequately test people? Do they have enough detectives to track down newly infected people? And do they have enough medical supplies?
The Times conducted an analysis to see which counties could pass just the first two criteria _ whether deaths have stopped in the past 14 days, and whether there is no more than one case per 10,000 residents in that same time period. Most of California failed that test.
In fact, 95% of Californians live in counties that don't meet that standard, the Times analysis found. Not a single county in Southern California nor the San Francisco Bay Area met the criteria.
The 24 counties that did meet the criteria, for the two-week period that ended Thursday, are all in Northern California and most are sparsely populated.
The three largest counties meeting both criteria are Placer County, population 380,000, northeast of Sacramento; Santa Cruz County, population 274,000, south of San Jose; and Butte County, population 227,000, in the foothills of the northern Sierra Nevada.
With the exception of Santa Cruz County, all 24 counties are located north of the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento and the Yosemite Valley.
Only 2 million of California's 39.1 million residents live in these counties.
The failure of most California counties to meet the criteria demonstrates just how persistent the coronavirus is in the Golden State's most populous areas. The Times analysis found that 92% of Californians live in counties that in the last two weeks have recorded at least one death from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
The criteria need only to be met by counties wanting to move faster than the statewide pace of reopening. While California entered Phase 2 of Newsom's reopening plan Friday, its effect statewide was limited _ only allowing lower-risk businesses to open for curbside pickup, like florists and stores selling books, clothes, music, toys and sporting goods. The relaxation only applied to counties without stricter local rules.
The new criteria would need to be satisfied for counties seeking to move faster than the rest of the state to open up businesses in the latter part of Phase 2, giving customers the ability to dine inside restaurants and head into shopping malls.
The criteria was developed in response to sparsely populated California counties _ so far spared from a high death toll _ who have been demanding to reopen faster than the state's largest metro areas that have been harder hit.
But counties that do not currently qualify for an accelerated exemption to the statewide pace of reopening need not fret, Newsom suggested. He said California will continue to move through the opening phases together, and counties that don't qualify for an exemption to the statewide standard now will continue to progress through the state's evolving reopening plans.
"Over the next few weeks, we'll be making subsequent announcements for the entire state, not just those that meet those more restrictive criteria," Newsom said.
Los Angeles County, California's most populous and home to one-quarter of the state's population, has suffered the highest death toll of any county for the last two weeks. Its 622 deaths were 61% of all the deaths recorded in California from COVID-19 during that time period. Another 51 deaths were reported in L.A. County on Friday.
On Friday, L.A. County's public health director, Barbara Ferrer, said Newsom's criteria of no deaths was really more intended to allow rural counties largely spared from the worst of the pandemic to reopen faster than the rest of the state. L.A. County will only be seeing zero deaths when the pandemic is over, she said.
Riverside County comes up second, recording 92 fatalities in the past two weeks. Riverside County's health officer Dr. Cameron Kaiser has been locked in a contentious standoff with some members of the county Board of Supervisors who are demanding he rescind orders requiring people to wear facial coverings in public and stay at least 6 feet away from others.
Nine other counties had death tolls in the double digits over the last two weeks: San Diego County, with 65; Santa Clara County, 32; Orange County, 30; San Bernardino County, 31; Alameda County, 21; San Mateo County, 17; Tulare County, 18; Stanislaus County, 14; and San Francisco, 11. In all, there were 26 counties that have reported at least one death in the past two weeks, in counties home to 36 million people.
Eight counties _ with a combined population of 1 million _ have met the standard of no deaths in the last two weeks, but have rates of new cases higher than the state's cutoff for a speedier reopening. The worst hit county in this category is Kings County in the San Joaquin Valley, with 13 new cases per 10,000 residents _ just above L.A. County's rate of almost 12 cases per 10,000 residents in the past two weeks.
Kings County is the site of a large coronavirus outbreak at a meat packing plant in Hanford, where at least 138 have been infected, according to The Fresno Bee.
The others with disease rates that exceed the state standard include Mariposa County, home of Yosemite National Park, with eight new cases per 10,000 residents. Three other counties have between two and three new cases per 10,000 people: Mono County, home to the Mammoth Mountain ski area; San Luis Obispo County on the Central Coast; and Merced County in the San Joaquin Valley.
