Yolo County closing some indoor businesses. Other Northern California counties may follow

Yolo County will voluntarily roll back indoor activity at a wide range of businesses, following California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s direction to 19 other counties, including Sacramento, to pull back on reopenings in the wake of surging coronavirus cases.

Yolo County appears to be one of the first counties in California to preemptively close indoor business at restaurants, movie theaters, bars, bowling alleys, card rooms and more ahead of the Fourth of July weekend, despite not being told to do so by the state.

Newsom’s directive Wednesday applied to 19 counties that had been on the state’s “watch list” for at least three days in a row because they are struggling to contain or handle the virus.

The decision to close the same industries targeted by the governor in Yolo County comes as local officials expect to reach a critical benchmark that would place it on the state monitoring list “at some point in the next week,” said spokeswoman Jenny Tan.

There have been well over 25 infections per 100,000 residents in the last two weeks, and about 7 percent of coronavirus tests conducted in the county are coming back positive, Tan said. Hitting an 8 percent positive rate would put it on the state’s watch list.

Yolo County is still determining the exact timing identified businesses will have to close indoor activity, but it will be “ahead of the Fourth of July weekend,” Tan said.

The county has been among the most cautious in the region during the pandemic, requiring masks in public long before Newsom ordered it this month. Concerns about new infection outbreaks had already been brewing in Yolo County, after Sacramento County announced it would require bars to close earlier this week.

“We are going to be a destination for people who can’t go to bars in Sacramento,” Supervisor Jim Provenza said during Tuesday’s board meeting.

Will other Northern California counties close?

Sacramento and Solano, counties on two sides of Yolo, were among the 19 counties ordered to roll back reopenings, as health officials have seen a worrying increase in infections and positive tests results.

Placer, El Dorado, Yuba and Sutter counties have not announced they will follow Yolo County’s lead and voluntarily close certain businesses, though all have seen a notable increase in the number of infections among residents in the last month since local officials have started to loosen stay-at-home orders.

An El Dorado County spokeswoman cautioned any Sacramento residents who come up Highway 50 for recreation this weekend to be safe.

“El Dorado residents have taken the action necessary to keep our numbers low, and we want to maintain that trajectory,” Carla Hass said. “We hope that anyone who will come to El Dorado County takes all the proper precautions to keep themselves and our residents safe.”

In Placer County, there have been about 73.3 cases for every 100,000 residents over the last two weeks, “which falls below the 100 cases per 100,000 resident threshold (for state monitoring) but has increased significantly compared to a few weeks ago,” Placer County health officer Dr. Aimee Sisson said.

“Stay home as much as possible, and do not gather with people outside your household – keep your backyard barbecue in the family. Look for alternative ways to celebrate,” she said in a statement Wednesday.

Officials in Yuba and Sutter counties have been particularly alarmed by the web of infections spreading throughout the community.

“Someone attends a gathering like a BBQ or birthday party and gets infected, and then that infectious person has no symptoms or ignores mild symptoms and goes into work, infecting coworkers, who in turn return to their homes and infect their household members,” the county officials said in a statement Wednesday.

In mid-April, the two counties were averaging about one new infection every two days. As of last week, there are now about 15 infections every day.

Health officials there expect to be added to the state’s monitoring list soon, spokeswoman Rachel Rosenbaum said, meaning state-mandated business closures may be on the way.

Yuba-Sutter Health Officer Dr. Phuong Luu stopped short of ordering business closures this coming holiday weekend, but urged residents Wednesday to avoid social gatherings “so that cases and hospitalizations do not increase many-fold more.”

This story was originally published July 1, 2020 at 3:25 PM.