Sonoma County officials detail extended stay-at-home order

Public health officials Saturday outlined the criteria the Bay Area region must meet before Sonoma County can exit a state-imposed stay-at-home order, which is set to continue indefinitely.

On Dec. 12, Sonoma County health officials preemptively imposed the tight restrictions on businesses and gatherings laid out in the state’s order, a decision aimed at quelling an alarming spike in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations.

A week later on Dec. 17, the state activated the order for the entire 11-county Bay Area region, a move triggered once total ICU bed capacity fell below 15%.

The county-enforced restrictions expired just before midnight on Saturday. But the regional order, which is effectively the same as the lapsed county regulations, will remain in place until four-week projections for available ICU beds in the Bay Area return to at least 15%. At that point, the order will end immediately.

As of Saturday, the Bay Area’s overall ICU bed capacity had dropped to just 3%.

The California Department of Public Health could have allowed the order to expire on Friday―three weeks after it was initiated―but declined to do so because available emergency beds remained far below the 15% mark.

State officials will now make ICU bed projections about twice a week to determine when the order can be lifted for the Bay Area and the three other designated regions currently under the mandate, according to the order.

In addition to the Bay Area, the Southern California, San Joaquin Valley and Greater Sacramento regions are subject to the order. The Northern California region, which includes Mendocino and Lake counties, is not.

In an interview Saturday, Sonoma County Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase said it likely would be at least a few more weeks before the region could expect to emerge from the stay-at-home directive since ICU capacity remains dangerously low as the virus continues to spread rapidly.

But even once the regional order is lifted, the county may still have to adhere to stringent regulations if it fails to move out of the most restrictive tier of the state’s community reopening plan because of a high volume of new cases.

One relative bright spot for the county, though, is that local hospitals appear to have more open beds than the region as a whole. As of Saturday, the county’s ICU bed availability was at 14%, with 10 of 56 staffed beds open.

Still, Mase warned the number of all coronavirus-related hospitalizations in the county is spiking to all-time highs, reaching 94 as of Friday, according to county data.

“We have more hospitalizations than we’ve ever had before, and that’s concerning, but we also have surge capacity,” Mase said, referring to a hospital’s ability to increase the number of emergency patients it can admit. “I don’t think hospitals are at the place where we’ve hit surge capacity.”

The extension of stay-at-home orders come early in what is shaping up to be one of the deadliest months of the pandemic in Sonoma County. Since Jan.1, at least 26 residents have died due to complications of COVID-19, bringing the county death toll to 218.

As of Friday, the county had reported an average of 225 new cases each day over the prior two weeks, according to state data. That metric has begun to dip recently, but is still almost four times higher than at the start of November.

Although the flattening of reported caseloads may be an encouraging sign, Mase said potential cases and hospitalizations stemming from gatherings and travel over the holidays may not be fully apparent until the end of January.

And with transmission still rampant, she said it’s unclear when this latest surge may truly begin to recede, especially if some residents are ignoring restrictions in the stay-at-home order.

“It’s hard to say at this time because there’s so many factors,” Mase said. “I can tell you we’re still having a lot of cases every day.”

You can reach Staff Writer Ethan Varian at ethan.varian@pressdemocrat.com or 707-521-5412. On Twitter @ethanvarian