UPDATE 8:15 p.m. — Mendocino Public Health had released a new health order which goes into effect tonight at midnight and will further loosen restrictions forced by the COVID-19 pandemic. You can read the order here, see a redlined version highlighting differences with the past order here, and see Public Health’s press release below.
The order results from loosening of structures made at the state level by Governor Newsom, which are now being enacted at the local level, and is not the result of Mendocino County enter the latter phase of “Stage 2,” an even greater relaxation of restrictions which is expected to go into effect late next week.
According to the Public Health Office, businesses that will be allowed to operate (as of 11:59 p.m. tonight) include:
…businesses which do not generally require close customer contact, and can provide services while maintaining appropriate social distancing from customers or the public, such as laundromats, dry cleaners, other laundry services, auto repair shops, car washes, landscapers, pet grooming, and dog walking
…businesses for which service provision may necessitate entry to private residences or community facilities, but [at which] social distancing can still be maintained, such as residential and janitorial cleaning services, HVAC services, appliance repair persons, electricians, plumbers, other mechanical tradespersons, handypersons, and general contractors.
Mendocino Public Health
Business that still won’t be allowed are those at which close contact is still necessary, and these include hair and nail salons and other similar businesses.
ORIGINAL
UKIAH, 5/15/20 — A further loosening of shelter-in-place (SIP) restrictions and a major expansion of testing capacity are coming to Mendocino County in the next couple weeks. Today at a press conference delivered via social media CEO Carmel Angelo and Public Health Officer Dr. Noemi Doohan announced that because Governor Gavin Newsom had made some changes to state level SIP restrictions, the health officer would also be releasing a revised local health order either late today, or sometime tomorrow. These new relaxations could mean the resumption of animal grooming, and landscaping, among other things, though more will be clear once the new order is issued.
As of late this afternoon confirmed cases of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) remain stable at 13 in Mendocino County, with the overwhelming majority of those people recovered, and no deaths. Nationally 88,500 people have died as a result of the disease, over the last three months, with 1,858 deaths yesterday. And earlier today a group of about 20 protesters met in front of the courthouse in Ukiah, demonstrating for greater reopening in California.
(Here is the video)
However, even greater loosening of restrictions will follow soon thereafter, as Doohan plans to complete the “attestation,” a document demonstrating the Mendocino County has met certain COVID-19 prepraredness benchmarks set by the state — by the middle of next week, thus allowing this county to progress into the later half of the state’s “Stage 2” of the reopening plan. These new openings may include in-store retail shopping, limited dining-in at restaurants, new opportunities for kids to play together, and a new idea of a 12 person stable group composed of a more than one family that can come into more frequent contact, something referred to as a “bubble” and sometimes described colloquially as a “pod.” Such bubbles could for instance carpool together, or in another example given by Doohan, build a fence together and work on each-others’ land.
What’s more, new details about the OptumServe testing were revealed, namely that the company would be setting up a testing facility at the Redwood Empire Fairgrounds, that testing would be available on an appointment, as well as limited walk-up, basis, and that those tests would become available sometime in the next couple weeks. The statewide goal of this testing is to allow all Californians to get tested, and Doohan noted that this will allow for some frontline workers to be retested periodically, people such as grocery store cashiers and paramedics.
California is currently in Stage 2 of a statewide four stage “Resilience Roadmap,” with Stage 1 having been the most restrictive shelter-in-place regime we were under for the past couple months, and Stage 4 marking the end of restrictions due to the pandemic, something that is not likely until a vaccine has been developed and widely enough distributed. Within Stage 2 there are gradations, which are occurring at different rates in different localities, with some counties quickly jumping to the least extensive implementation of Stage 2, some still working on fully developing “attesting” to their capacities, and some, such as Los Angeles County, committing to very strict lockdown measures remaining in place at least through midsummer.
Mendocino County has progressed into Stage 2 along with the rest of the state, but has not yet submitted an “attestation” that demonstrating critical benchmarks and allowing the county to loosen even more restrictions, while still safely combating the virus. Those benchmarks include: stabilizing the number of new cases and deaths from COVID-19 (something Mendocino has easily done), demonstrating a plan for contact tracing and case investigation, demonstrating surge capacity at hospitals for the eventually of a spike in cases, have sufficient reserves of PPE, having communication and public health guidance in place, and having at least 15 tests per 10,000 residents per day available, with an eye towards making that 20 per 10,000 eventually. On this last question Mendocino still falls short, but will very soon meet that mark with the arrival of the OptumServe testing facility.
That facility is being provided by the state, through the California Department of Public Health and the state’s contract with OptumServe. Sometime before Monday news of the exact timeline is expected to be released. When the testing facility does arrive it will be set up at the fairgrounds in Ukiah, and testing will be done on an appointment bassies, with some walk-ins allowed. The goal is to be able to test everyone in Mendocino County eventually. The tests will be free, though people with health insurance will be asked if they have insurance that will cover the cost. Tests will be of the nasopharyngeal variety, in which a swab is somewhat intrusively stuffed up the nose, to the region at the back of the nose and throat where the virus most prolifically multiplies. Those samples will most likely be driven to San Luis Obispo where the OptumServe lab is. Priority will be given to frontline workers, and at risk populations. And it is important to remember that this testing capacity will at first largely augment the “surveillance” testing done in the county, in which people who are not presenting symptoms are given tests to see if the virus is circulating within the community even among asymptomatic people.
The allocation of this testing comes after some struggle and lobbying on the part of local officials and our state representatives. Angelo noted in the press conference that she believed the call-to-action letter writing campaign had had some effect, as the voices of people in Mendocino County were finally heeded.
Doohan also thanked the California Department of Public Health, in conjunction with UCSF, for doing training in contact tracing and case investgation. She said that North Coast Opportunities (NCO) has been coordinating volunteers to be trained in the work.
Public Health press release:
(If the PDF file is not loading follow this link)
“The allocation of this testing comes after some struggle and lobbying on the part of local officials and our state representatives.”
You really mean some total incompetence on the part of local officials ? Just say it. We all know it.
Just who is actually responsible for meeting these mandates from our governor? A name please. So we can help urge them along.
Oh, and lets start a downtown beatification project to attract more homeless people.
Thank You
Should get a test even if we never were sick or had any symptons??????
I don’t see why hair and nail salons can’t open if they wear masks and gloves and we wear masks.
Hair salons and barber shops have always had to observe sanitary practices. Closing them down, like the rest of this fraudulent attack on our economy and personal freedoms, is unnecessary and outrageous.
24th April 2020
The researchers say that public health officials should issue a clear set of nutritional recommendations to complement messages about the role of hand washing and vaccinations in preventing the spread of infections.
Gombart, professor of biochemistry and biophysics in the OSU College of Science and a principal investigator at the Linus Pauling Institute, said: “Around the world, acute respiratory tract infections kill more than 2.5 million people every year.
“Meanwhile, there’s a wealth of data that shows the role that good nutrition plays in supporting the immune system. As a society we need to be doing a better job of getting that message across along with the other important, more common messages.
“The roles that vitamins C and D play in immunity are particularly well known. Vitamin C has roles in several aspects of immunity, including the growth and function of immune cells and antibody production. Vitamin D receptors on immune cells also affect their function. This means that vitamin D profoundly influences your response to infections.
https://www.healtheuropa.eu/vitamin-supplements-effective-for-fighting-covid-19/99573/
The medical professionals, epidemiologists and researchers who are presenting evidence that this global hysteria is manufactured are being silenced or marginalized in the MSM. I’d like to see Dr. Doohan in a debate with any one of them. She just rubber stamps Gov. Nuisance’s diktat with no regard for the science behind the coronavirus and how the lock-down and isolation order is not only counter-productive, it is dangerous. Here is just one of many interviews with experts to be found online:
https://gumshoenews.com/2020/05/14/professor-dolores-cahill-debunking-of-the-corona-narrative/
What type of test does OptumServe use?
People sniveling over guidelines put into place in order to prevent our tiny hospitals in Mendo County from being overwhelmed with people on respirators, some dying horrible deaths, because they’re too inept to paint their own toenails. Ya gotta wonder.
Show me where hospitals are being overwhelmed. It’s not about “painting toenails.” It’s about totalitarian control of every aspect of our lives, including the ability to make a living and provide for our families. It’s about arbitrary restrictions based, not on real science or reliable statistics, but on a hodge-podge of faulty projections by so-called experts, contradictions and outright false manipulation of data. What I “gotta wonder” about is why so many are willing to take the selective news bites of the MSM for gospel and are too lazy or gullible to do the research for themselves.
But maybe they would prefer to have the liberty to work, travel and gather socially eradicated on the stern admonition of a non-medical megalomaniac bent on inoculating and chipping every man, woman and child on the planet. Bill Gates is the 2nd largest contributor, after the U.S., to the WHO, which is headed by Tedros Adhanom, a former Ethiopian political thug with no medical training and a prominent member of the TPLF, listed in the Global Terrorism Database. Look it up.
Maybe folks like you have no problem with the fact that Dr. Anthony Fauci committed treason when in 2015 he funneled millions of our tax dollars to the Wuhan virology lab to continue a study of a coronavirus so risky that it had been suspended in the U.S. in 2014. (Bill Gates also magnanimously funded the Wuhan lab, but no surprise there.) Fauci should be behind bars (for that and other frauds he perpetrated), not issuing official statements at press conferences.
The current diktat—arbitrary “social” distancing, the masks that cause you to inhale your own exhaled pathogens and CO2, the self-isolation that is leading to increased depression, suicides and domestic violence—all of this is leading step by insidious step to ever greater control by totalitarian globalists. Maybe you are willing to accept this in exchange for an empty, meaningless “life” that they are graciously willing to grant you, but for the sake of my grandchildren and their entire generation I AM NOT!
What about testing in other parts of Mendocino County, such as the South Coast? It’s a four-hour round trip for those of us who live down here but we still pay the same amount in tax dollars every year. Is there any plan to offer mobile testing or involve the more remote clinics in the testing?