New Santa Clara County Health Order to Allow Outdoor Dining, Indoor Retail Starting Friday

Outdoor dining and in-store retail will be allowed in Santa Clara County starting Friday as part of new loosened shelter-in-place restrictions.

The new order, which was announced by health officials on Monday afternoon, will also allow a number of other businesses to operate, such as manufacturing, pet grooming, house cleaning and other low-contact services such as shoe or watch repair.

Summer camps, child care, open-air activities without physical contact and outdoor cultural or religious gatherings of no more than 25 people also have the go-ahead.

The county still encourages social distancing and will require re-opened businesses to follow certain safety protocols.

“Each decision we make involves difficult trade-offs and affects the community’s wellbeing in many different ways,” public health officers from six Bay Area jurisdictions said in a new release from earlier in the day. “As we open additional sectors, we are relying on businesses to consistently follow social distancing protocols and public health guidance to protect their employees and customers. Bay Area residents should still stay home as much as possible, wear face coverings, frequently wash hands, stay home when feeling ill, get tested if exposed, and follow the other precautions that have helped our region make such outstanding progress to slow the spread of COVID-19.”

As Santa Clara County begins to re-open, health officials will continue monitoring the five indicators around containment that they announced last month. Those include increasing testing while decreasing the positivity rate of tests, a steady decline of new infections, a low hospitalization rate, containment of outbreaks in nursing facilities and an increase in case investigations and contact tracing.

“The global pandemic is ongoing, and we must continue to protect the health and wellbeing of our entire community, especially those most vulnerable to serious illness and death from COVID-19,” Santa Clara County Public Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody said. “Public Health is about ensuring health in every sense of the word: from diseases like COVID-19, and from social and economic impacts on health too. For all those reasons, we have chosen to be measured in how and when we reopen.”

In a statement, county Supervisor Dave Cortese praised the “community’s cooperation” in following previous shelter-in-place guidelines.

“This is only a victory if we keep up our vigilance to stop coronavirus from spreading,” he said. “That will be even more difficult in the days and weeks ahead.”

19 Comments

  1. Simply Amazing,
    Global Pandemic = stay home forever, shut down the boarder, shut down the airports, shut down jails and prison’s, shut down stores and restaurant’s. Shut down all immigration till we can see who is here and control it to the last man.

    Three and a half years ago everyone was suing Donald Trump to stop him from finding out who’s here and who is trying to get into the county, now so called public health officials with no authority are doing so unchallenged.

    Simply amazing what a bunch of sheep we have become.

    • For the gulliberals, everything a democrat says is good and there are no complaints by the media. But if Trump says the same thing, it’s bad, and the liberal media vilify him.

    • WTF does this have to do with the article Grace published? You gotta find a better hobby than trolling, MT. Goes for you, too, OConnor.

      • There’s another liberal wanting to control what people are allowed to say.
        What IS it about you people?

  2. I suspect that Dr. Cody does not look at the data regarding the collateral effects of her edicts. The number of unemployed? Number of failed businesses? Number of suicides?

    • Perhaps she just realized that either the extended SIP helps cause riots, or that she will be found out when Rioters don’t come down with COVID in two weeks. Maybe both!

  3. Suddenly the County has changed course and is in a rush to open….
    Hmmm, I wonder what could have caused that??

    • > Suddenly the County has changed course and is in a rush to open….
      Hmmm, I wonder what could have caused that??

      Now that the AntiFA / BlackLivesMatter / d-Bug mobsters have succeeded in getting Liccardo to kneel before them (LITERALLY!), they want the “middle class” to present themselves in the public places where the mobsters can get in their faces and further terrorize them. (And maybe loot and trash a few Lexuses (“Lexi”) for good measure).

  4. Grace, thanks for posting about this here. Not sure I would have heard about it otherwise. I appreciate the work you and your colleagues are doing here at SJInside, and more and more I’m relying on your team to provide the local news and insight that we can’t get from anywhere else. Keep going, and thank you again! -SantaClaraCounty Resident

    • And why do you think you deserve to be allowed to dine outside, SCCrezzy?

      Do you think you have white privilege?

      People are STILL dying from coronavirus. You’re spreading disease!

      • Whoa thousands of protesters MARCHING in the streets in close proximity is ok, but dining outside isn’t? Who is spreading the “disease”?

        Do you want to destroy businesses? Don’t black ppl have their own businesses? Should we die from disease or FAILURE?!

  5. Just go with the flow.. At least we get to enjoy being outside..So please SHUT THE F UP!!! So tired of hearing WHITE PRIVILEGED!!! There is PRIVILEGE FOR EVERYONE WHO LIVES IN THE UNITED STATES.

  6. Trust the good citizens of Santa Clara County to make responsible choices without the threat of the police. Just make recommendations.

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