Here are the California counties with zero deaths from COVID-19 in past two weeks

When Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration laid out preliminary criteria for counties to start reopening their economies early, they included two tough requirements:

▪ Having no more than one new case of coronavirus per 10,000 people in the last two weeks.

▪ Having no COVID-19-related deaths in the previous two weeks.

Almost half of the state’s counties meet the first criteria, reporting fewer than one new case per 10,000 residents, according to a Bee review of case data from the California Department of Public Health and population data from the California Department of Finance. Almost all of them are in Northern California. Sacramento is, by far, the most populated.

Most counties have also hit the second criteria – no deaths in the last 14 days. But all of those counties are rural, semi-rural or suburban. It will be much harder for urban counties with more than one million people to go 14 days without logging a death.

A few caveats: Not all COVID-19 cases – or even deaths – are detected. Some places with broader testing regimes may detect more cases than places conducting fewer tests. In addition, there are sometimes discrepancies between daily case data reported by the state and case data reported by individual counties.

Many of Newsom’s other criteria for reopening early are hard to track using only data sources that are currently public. They include:

▪ A minimum daily testing capacity of 1.5 per 1,000 residents.

▪ Enough personal protective equipment for essential workers.

▪ The ability to house at least 15 percent of homeless residents

▪ County- or regional-level hospital capacity for a patient-surge of 35 percent.

▪ A robust plan to protect their hospital workforce.

▪ More than two weeks’ supply of personal protective equipment on-hand for skilled nursing facilities.

▪ Metrics in place that can serve as triggers for slowing the pace of reopening or tightening modifications.

▪ Having 15 contact tracers per 100,000 residents.

Phillip Reese is a data specialist at The Sacramento Bee and teaches at Sacramento State: 916-321-1137.