Sacramento and Yolo counties ended their COVID-19 emergencies. Here’s what that means
Sacramento and Yolo counties ended their local public health emergencies for COVID-19 on Tuesday, coinciding with Gov. Gavin Newsom rescinding California’s statewide emergency order.
The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to end the local state of emergency. The Yolo County Board of Supervisors voted Feb. 21 to lift Yolo’s local emergency and local health emergency orders, effective Tuesday.
Those two counties, as well as the state of California, first declared public health emergencies for the novel coronavirus in March 2020, the same month COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization.
Newsom last October announced California’s statewide emergency for COVID-19 would expire Feb. 28.
With the end of the local emergency, Sacramento County’s data dashboard for COVID-19 will be discontinued after a final weekly update Wednesday, county health officials said in a news release. COVID-19 infection and hospital data at the county level will remain available through the California Department of Public Health.
Public meetings governed by California’s Brown Act, including city councils, the Board of Supervisors and school boards within Sacramento County, will need to return to in-person meetings and may no longer meet on a virtual-only basis, according to the county news release.
State-funded COVID-19 test sites in the Sacramento area will “wind down operations in the coming months,” but exact closure dates have not yet been set.
The two counties’ local health emergencies had been in place continuously since March 2020.
Neary Placer County lifted its local health emergency more than two years ago, in September 2020, and El Dorado lifted its emergency in June 2021. Those two counties deferred to state-level COVID-19 protocols from the California Department of Public Health.
The end of the emergency declarations does not end mask requirements in certain situations under California’s COVID-19 rules, including in health care settings such as hospitals and nursing homes.
The federal COVID-19 emergency order remains in place through May 11.
Though the state and local emergency declarations have ended, COVID-19 continues to spread.
CDPH in a weekly update last Thursday reported a test positivity rate of 6.5%, rising slightly in recent weeks. The state has plateaued near 2,500 patients in hospitals with confirmed COVID-19 throughout most of February.
California’s death toll from COVID-19 also officially surpassed 100,000 in last week’s update from state health officials.
