Bay Area Health Officers Move to Implement the State’s New Regional Stay Home Order, Not Waiting Until Local Hospitals Are Near Crisis to Act

Homeless Care & Coordination – HealthPAC – Center for Healthy Schools & Communities

Alameda County Health Care Services Agency

As forecast in our statement yesterday, Alameda County, alongside the City of Berkeley and the counties of Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, and Santa Clara, will be adopting the State’s Stay-at-Home orders on an earlier timeline. The Health Officers announced this action during a joint press conference this afternoon.

The temporary restrictions will go into effect on 12:01 am, Monday, December 7, 2020 in Alameda County, and will remain in effect through January 4, 2021. Please see our summary of changes and what’s open for quick reference. We will be updating our Shelter in Place orders and guidance accordingly.

This early action is needed because the number of new cases is rising rapidly and we expect to see more cases from the Thanksgiving weekend. Hospitalizations are already matching our peak from the summer and, because these lag behind case increases by a week or more, we are at high risk of exhausting our system capacity. This is a regional issue because hospitals provide overflow capacity for neighboring jurisdictions, and our neighboring counties have seen rapid increases in the past two weeks.

Acting now will help us bend the curve once again, save lives, and give us an opportunity to enter 2021 with more stability.

We recognize how challenging it is to shelter in place during the holidays and we appreciate the ongoing sacrifices made by our businesses and communities. We sincerely thank you for helping us to save lives in Alameda County and across the Bay Area.

Alameda County does have more ICU runway than our neighbors but our health systems are connected and our epidemics are connected. When our neighbors run out of beds patients will need to come to our hospitals. In fact, the critical situation in Santa Clara means that we have fewer beds than we think because we will be asked to help, and we will provide beds when neighboring counties run out. Santa Clara is the largest county in the Bay Area and is already below 15% ICU bed capacity. When cases are rising across the region it is only a matter time before things get worse here. The earlier we act and the more we act together with our neighbors, the greater the impact we can have in saving lives and ending this surge more quickly. We’re in this together, let’s do our part, stay home to stay healthy, and we’ll be together again soon.