There are some indoor activities that Santa Clara County is not going to permit residents to do even though the county has moved into the red tier of coronavirus reopening, which includes going to the movies and hosting indoor gatherings.
Several months ago, Santa Clara County put a Risk Reduction Order into place to guide the county’s decisions on what to allow during the pandemic, and red tier or not, Santa Clara County Counsel James R. Williams said it’s still in place.
“Remember that the stricter of the state order, or the local order, is controlled,” he said during a Tuesday afternoon press conference.
That local order, he said, dictates that outdoor is always safer, so the theaters and indoor dining will remain closed.
“Trying to keep the case counts here, locally, as low as possible,” Williams said. “And again, we only moved into the red tier because of how much testing we do above the state average.”
There is a credit towards the next opening level, which counties can get for copious testing.
“You see, when we do testing we actually find more cases, as opposed to places that don’t do testing, where they assume that they are not finding cases,” said Santa Clara County Covid-19 Testing Officer Dr. Marty Fenstersheib.
Once a case is found, contact tracing can lead to quarantining and hopefully stop that spread.