Alameda County Health Officials Shutting Down Outdoor Dining – CBS San Francisco


Alameda County Health Officials Shutting Down Outdoor Dining – CBS San Francisco

OAKLAND (CBS SF) — Alameda County health officials announced late Friday night they were being forced to once again prohibit outdoor dining during a surge of new cornavirus cases across California.

For several weeks, local residents have been able to enjoy a meal with social distancing and outside seating at local restaurants as Alameda County health officials began rolling back COVID-19 restrictions.

Nowhere was the rush to outdoor dining more visible than in the city of Alameda. Workers re-striped a segment of Park Street to cordon off space for outdoor dining and shopping.

Crews created two lanes instead of four between Tilden Way and Encinal Avenue to allow space for maintaining physical distance from one another to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Alameda County Supervisors were planning an emergency meeting for Saturday to discuss what can be done.

While Alameda County is not on the state’s COVID-19 watchlist, it has yet to ask Gov. Garvin Newsom for a variance from his phased reopening of businesses. San Francisco, Santa Clara and other Bay Area counties have applied for and been granted variances.

The current surge in the state of new cases impacts the businesses that can and cannot be open in counties without variances.

“Today we learned the state issued updated guidance, dated July 9th, prohibiting outdoor dining in non-variance counties, which includes Alameda County. While Alameda County’s Health Officer Order allowed for outdoor dining, under this stricter state guidance, all restaurants, wineries and bars in Alameda County may only be open for drive-through or pick-up/delivery options,” the Friday night release stated.

At mid-week press conference, Newsom warned county officials across the state that some restrictions may be reimposed. He noted that he was not happy with the continuing rise in cases and the state’s positivity rate.

“We’re looking at a 7.1 percent positivity rate … You’re seeing a doubling, sometimes tripling of a positivity rate in some other states compared to California — by the way, I’m not pleased with a 7.1 percent positivity rate … but in other states that positivity rate is substantially even higher,” Newsom said. “As a consequence testing is increasing, testing supply constraints are starting to present themselves again.”

Newsom blamed the increasing spread of COVID-19 on behavior of individuals refusing to follow the state’s instructions to help reduce the spread of the disease.

“We’re doing this because we’re seeing hospitalizations rates grow … It’s because people are not wearing their masks. People are not, for many different reasons and many different circumstances, practicing the physical distancing that they should and they must, in order to mitigate the spread of this virus,” Newsom said.

Alameda County has been the hardest hit of all Bay Area counties during the pandemic. It also has lifted the fewest of the strict restrictions imposed since mid-March.

As of Friday, the county has had 7,485 total confirmed cases since the outbreak began. There has been 147 deaths and more than 140 county residents were currently hospitalized with the virus, 57 of those are in the ICU.


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