State lifts stay-home order for Fresno, Valley. Here’s what it means for local businesses
A decision Monday by state leaders to lift a regional stay-at-home order for the San Joaquin Valley, as well as two other major parts of the state, means that restaurants in Fresno County and its neighboring counties can immediately resume outdoor dining, while barbers and hairstylists can start cutting hair indoors once again.
Instead of sweeping restrictions on many types of business operations aimed at reducing the spread of the novel coronavirus and easing a surge of cases putting a strain on hospitals, Valley counties will now revert back to a system of color-coded tiers for business reopening based on the prevalence of new COVID-19 infections and the assessed risk of transmitting the virus in the community.
Fresno, Kings, Madera, Merced and Tulare counties will resume their status in purple Tier 1 of the state’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy. Tier 1 is the most restrictive of the four levels, representing “widespread” risk of spreading the virus. But it does allow restaurants to immediately be able to offer outdoor dining.
Under the stay-at-home order that’s been in effect in the San Joaquin Valley since December, eateries have been limited to take-out or delivery service only – although some businesses have defied the order and served meals to customers for on-site dining.
Hair salons, nail salons and barber shops, which were to have been closed under the stay-home order, will be able to resume their services indoors. Retail stores can expand their capacity somewhat, increasing from 20% under the regional order to 25% under the purple tier.
Chuck Van Fleet, owner of Vino Grille & Spirits in Fresno and head of the local chapter of the California Restaurant Association, said he was pleased to see the order lifted so restaurants can begin bringing employees back to their jobs.
“Getting our people back is the first thing,” he told The Bee on Monday morning. “We’re a long way from making money or even breaking even, but we can get some of our employees back on the payroll so they can get on with their lives, get off unemployment and let them make some money.”
Van Fleet said his business will be able to bring five employees back to work to resume outdoor dining. He said his business, which includes retail sales of wines, has helped him weather the closure order. “People have been staying at home and drinking more,” he said.
Some restaurants may not be able to pivot as quickly from take-out or delivery to providing outdoor dining for customers, Van Fleet noted, especially those that don’t already have patio spaces.
“If they were able to put up a tent before (the closure order), now they have to scramble to get that tent back, and that costs a lot of money,” he said. “Some people spend $12,000 to $13,000 a month on these tents” in addition to the rent for their space.
Mariposa County emerges from the stay-at-home order into red Tier 2 of the state’s framework, confronting “substantial” risk for the virus to spread. In red-tier counties, restaurants can resume indoor dining at 25% of capacity; churches can hold indoor services at up to 25% capacity; and gyms and health clubs can be open indoors at no more than 10% capacity.
Not easy to restart
At Max’s Bistro, a popular northwest Fresno eatery, owner J.J. Wettstead brought in a large tent to allow for outdoor dining in part of the parking lot when it was earlier allowed under the purple-tier restrictions. “That was not an insubstantial cost,” Wettstead said Monday.
But while lifting the stay-at-home order is effective immediately, “it’s just not reality” to be ready to resume outdoor service in a day or two, he added. Wettstead said he’s aiming to reopen this weekend or perhaps Feb. 1, depending how quickly things come together.
“Staff has to be gathered, food and beverages have to be gathered, and we have to put ourselves into the state of readiness that our customers expect,” Wettstead said. With cold and rainy weather upon the area, he needs to bring back the outdoor heaters that weren’t needed over the past month and a half.
Some restaurants simply defied the stay-at-home order and continued to provide not only outdoor dining, but also served food in their dining rooms. Others found ways to skirt the order, including the Patio Cafe in Clovis, where the restaurant’s website and a manager both confirmed that while customers’ orders were packaged to go, people could seat themselves in the outdoor patio to eat.
By contrast, Wettstead said that he’s done everything by the book, only doing to-go orders since Dec. 6. He’s torn when he sees other restaurateurs who disregard the rules.
“Half of me cheers them on and sympathizes with them,” he said. “The other half is a little irked that they’re almost picking the pockets of businesses that are doing the right thing.”
Operating with only to-go orders, he said, has reduced normal revenues by about 70%. “When we’re able to do outdoor dining, we can bring that number down,” Wettstead said. “One of the biggest differences will be the revenue loss until we can use the space that we pay rent for each month. Right now I’m paying rent on a portable structure that I don’t own … so it’s costing us more to do business right now.
“We’re losing money, but we’re keeping people employed,” he added.
Reduced hospital burden
In the San Joaquin Valley, spanning 12 counties from San Joaquin in the north to Kern in the south, the stay-at-home order took effect Dec. 6, after the availability of ICU beds fell to below 15% of capacity – the threshold for the order. On Monday, the state Department of Public Health estimated the region’s current ICU availability at 0%, where it has been for several weeks.
State health officials said the decision to lift the order is based on four-week forecasts for improvement in the availability of ICU beds in each region. On Monday, the state announced that its four-week projection for the Valley is that ICU availability will rebound to 22.3% by Feb. 21, back above the 15% threshold.
The state, however, has not disclosed how it makes its forecasts.
The availability of ICU beds reflects the number of beds that are open and can be staffed to handle seriously ill patients, whether they have COVID-19 or other conditions such as heart attacks, stroke, trauma or others that require intensive care.
Across the 12-county region on Sunday, the state reported that all medical hospitals had a combined total of 420 confirmed or suspected coronavirus patients in their intensive-care, and 61 available ICU beds. Ordinarily, hospitals in the region have a licensed intensive-care capacity of 657 beds.
In Fresno County, hospital ICUs were treating 95 confirmed and suspected coronavirus patients patients and had only seven available ICU beds for new patients.
The number of people in Fresno County hospitals for COVID-19 peaked on Jan. 10 at 676. By Sunday, that figure had dipped to 575. That’s a drop of 101 patients – but it remains more than five times higher than the number of people hospitalized on Nov. 1, before a surge in cases and hospitalizations that health officials believe to be associated with Halloween gatherings and that built momentum through the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year holidays.
In purple, but far from red
Lifting the order comes at a time when Fresno County and neighboring Valley counties are far distant from being able to move from purple Tier 1 into the less-restrictive red Tier 2, denoting “substantial” risk of viral transmission in the community. As of last week, Fresno County had an average of more than 75 new cases of COVID-19 per day per 100,000 residents – more than 10 times the threshold of seven or fewer cases per 100,000 to emerge from purple into the red tier, in which restaurants could resume indoor dining.
Also last week, nearly one in five Fresno County residents getting coronavirus tests were shown to test positive for the virus – more than double the 8% positivity rate needed to move to the less restrictive red tier.
Local officials said Monday that while the regional lockdown has been lifted, it’s too soon to let up on other measures designed to slow the spread of the virus, including wearing masks or face coverings in public, frequent hand washing, maintaining physical distance of six feet from others in public, and avoiding large gatherings or mixing with people from multiple households.
“We have to continue to take the precautions that we need to prevent the spread of COVID, because (there are) only seven ICU beds in all of Fresno County,” Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer said Monday.
Dyer added that he’s encouraged by the projections for the region’s ICU capacity to rebound. “But that could change if people let their guard down,” he said. “It could change if people stop socially distancing. It could change of people make the decision not to wear a mask, especially if their indoors.”
Tulare County officials offered a similar caution. “While there are positive signs that the virus is spreading at a slower rate across the state, the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over,” said a statement issued Monday by the Tulare County Department of Health and Human Services.
Van Fleet said he believes Gov. Gavin Newsom faced intense pressure from the restaurant industry and other sectors to lift the stay-at-home order, including lawsuits by restaurants in different parts of the state.
Van Fleet noted that coronavirus cases continued to increase in California even after the regional order was put in place. “Our numbers are no worse than some states that have no restrictions,” he said Monday. He said he believes the order resulted in more people having gatherings and parties at home instead of dining out at restaurants, generating more opportunities for the virus to spread.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the coronavirus is airborne and passed through droplets. People can breathe in those droplets or airborne particles while in close proximity to or in a poorly ventilated space with an infected person. In-person dining and drinking — unlike shopping at a grocery store or retail store — requires people take off their masks for longer periods of time together, thus increasing possibility for exposure.
A recent article in the journal Nature, reporting on a study of travel habits during business shutdowns and stay-at-home orders last spring in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, reported that certain types of places that people go – such as restaurants – were likely to result in greater risk of coronavirus infection than others as a result of lifting pandemic restrictions.
“On average across metro areas, full-service restaurants, gyms, hotels, cafes, religious organizations and limited-service restaurants produced the largest predicted increases in infections when reopened,” the study’s authors reported. “Reopening full-service restaurants was associated with a particularly high risk.” Mobility data showed that such places held higher risk because they attracted more people and and visitors stayed longer, the authors reported.
This story was originally published January 25, 2021 at 10:54 AM.
