Most counties in the Bay Area will go into another lockdown at some time this weekend, ahead of state mandates based on ICU capacities.
Counties implementing that order early are Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, Santa Clara and Marin, plus the City of Berkeley. The new stay at home orders start Sunday, Monday or Tuesday and run for at least a month.
Sonoma County, along with Napa, Solano, and San Mateo, has not made the move to stricter regulations just yet.
Dr. Sundari Mase is the Public Health Officer for Sonoma County. She told KCBS Radio that Sonoma chose not to join other Bay Area counties in adopting the state’s stay-at-home order for several reasons.
"We don’t feel our current hospitalizations, case rates, test positivity and ICU capacity justify joining the rest of the counties in immediately implementing the stay-at-home order," she said.
She added that there is plenty of ICU capacity still unused in the county, much less than Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plans for putting regions into lockdown if only 15% of its ICU beds are open. While state numbers put Sonoma into that category, Dr. Mase has concerns about the numbers the state is using to determine their overall capacity.
The state numbers show Sonoma as having "less than 3% capacity."
Dr. Mase doesn’t believe that this represents "a true situation within our local hospitals right now, or the capacity of our hospitals to meet an increase in COVID19 cases."
Dr. Mase said that after checking in with local hospitals, the county found that of the 77 staffed and licensed ICU beds in Sonoma, 40% are actually available.
But Dr. Mase and her colleagues aren’t taking the situation lightly.
"We are tracking the situation closely, talking with our healthcare partners daily, if not hourly, and are leaving open the option of joining the other counties if the need arises," assured Dr. Mase.
Her office is also in communication with the California Department of Public Health, about how the county numbers differ from state evaluations. Dr. Mase also said that even if Sonoma’s numbers remain lower than the states in the long run, she’s not ruling out joining the other counties in implementing a lockdown.
She said that county "hospital partners have advised us that we have they have the ability to increase ICU capacity immediately if needed."
In the meantime, Sonoma County will continue to track what is happening a cross the Bay Area and implement new policies as numbers change.
