O.C. supervisors eager to get state OK to further loosen lockdown on local businesses

The Orange County Board of Supervisors is itching to submit a plan to the state that will allow more local businesses to reopen and forge a wider path out of the coronavirus lockdown that has put the economy in a choke hold.

County health officer Dr. Nichole Quick told the supervisors Tuesday that county staff is working on a plan to allow the county to go deeper into the second of four state-outlined reopening phases — an advancement that, namely, would allow dining in restaurants and shopping inside malls with some physical distancing modifications.

Supervisors Vice Chair Andrew Do asked if area businesses could be more open by the weekend, even if the county’s plan isn’t in precise alignment with the latest requirements laid out Monday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“I would prefer that we try the best we can and then we can always supplement our application rather than to sit and wait for the perfect application to be crafted,” he said. “You have heard from our residents and certainly from this board we want the county to open ASAP.”

Newsom’s relaxed guidelines allow counties to further reopen if they can show fewer than 25 coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents in the last 14 days — a standard that was originally 1 new case per 10,000 residents. Counties could instead show that fewer than 8% of residents tested for the virus over a seven-day period were positive.

For Orange County, with a population of about 3.2 million, that loosened standard comes out to about 800 new cases over a two-week period.

Counties also must show that the number of hospitalizations for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, have stabilized, meaning they can’t increase by more than 5% over a seven-day period or that a county can’t have more than 20 hospitalizations on any single day over a 14-day period.

The new standard removed a requirement that counties cannot loosen their lockdowns if there have been any COVID-19 deaths in a two-week period.

Newsom’s stay-at-home order has been in place for nine weeks. Orange County, with the rest of California, entered the first part of Stage 2 — curbside retail at certain “low-risk” stores, adding to the takeout restaurant service that has been allowed throughout the lockdown — on May 8.

Supervisor Lisa Bartlett, who is president of the state’s association of counties, also wanted to merge into what could be heavy traffic as more counties seek the state’s green light.

As of May 12, seven of California’s 58 counties had the state OK to move deeper into Stage 2, while another 23 were under review. After this week’s relaxed parameters, all but five of California’s counties could potentially get approval.

“If we need some minor tweaks or some supplemental things later let’s work on it, but let’s get in the queue,” she said.

Supervisor Don Wagner said the earlier, more stringent version of Newsom’s reopening guidelines was “not at all reflective of reality” in urban areas like Orange County. He asked for a “realistic” if not perfect proposal.

“To the extent that the perfect is the enemy of the good, we don’t want to let that happen,” Wagner said. “If we need to supplement, let’s supplement.”

“Let’s open,” he added. “Let’s open as much as possible, let’s open as soon as possible, let’s open as safely as possible.”

Los Angeles Times Staff Writers John Myers, Taryn Luna and Phil Willon contributed to this report.

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