Sonoma County loosens its COVID-19 ban on large gatherings

Amid calls to soften local COVID-19 restrictions geared to the omicron surge, Sonoma County health officials on Thursday slightly loosened limits on indoor public gatherings, specifying that attendance caps at events would apply only to spectators and visitors going forward and not to the involved performers, athletes and officials.

The move, which the county framed as a “clarification,” relaxed capacity limits that were previously set at 50 people total for indoor public events, including sports games, concerts and performing arts shows. The cap of 100 people for outdoor events remains unchanged.

The 30-day event ban, effective Jan. 12, is the only one of its type currently in the Bay Area, and since it was announced, county officials have received significant push back from the local business community, who said they had not be consulted.

School districts and parents shut out of their children’s games and extracurricular activities also said it was too restrictive, limiting access by loved ones to a wide range campus events.

Effective Thursday, under the new guidance from Dr. Sundari Mase, the county health officer, more of those indoor spectators will be allowed on the sidelines and in the seats because the limits will not apply to performers, athletes, coaches, event staff and news media.

“We’re grateful for the discussion and for the clarification and change,” said Healdsburg Unified School District Superintendent Chris Vanden Heuvel, one of at least eight district leaders to press Mase and county officials for a higher capacity cap on school events.

“I think it makes a huge difference for a lot of the kids and families and I recognize Dr. Mase’s job of keeping everyone in the county safe is really difficult,” he said.

County officials have acknowledged the strong pushback and flaws in county communication on the ban’s rollout two weeks ago. But they have also stressed that the temporary ban on large gatherings is supported by local case data and is well-intentioned — an attempt to avoid even more restrictive measures, they said.

“This impacts businesses, but we all know that we never want to go back to those dark days of closing down businesses, of closing down in-person learning and shutting down our lives,” Board of Supervisors Chair James Gore said during a press briefing Thursday morning.

The ban is the only one of its type among Bay Area counties restricting large gatherings at this point in the pandemic. It is set to remain in place until 11:59 p.m. Feb. 10 while other Bay Area jurisdictions lift pandemic measures, including San Francisco’s move this week to relax mask mandates for vaccinated and boosted groups of office workers and gym patrons.

During Thursday’s briefing, Mase reiterated that she’d issued the order in response to the dramatic omicron surge and its impact on local hospitals. She the county’s local hospital capacity is among the lowest in state for a mid-sized metro region; hospitals are experiencing dire staffing shortages; local homeless shelters, skilled nursing and the county jail are experiencing large outbreaks.

“We think our 30-day restriction on the size of gatherings helped us turn the corner and ease some of the stresses experienced by our hospitals and other healthcare partners,” she said.

The modification comes a week after a special Jan. 19 Board of Supervsiors meeting focused on the public health order. It featured both vocal supporters from the ranks of public health and social welfare advocates and critics who said it had impinged in costly ways on their business or overly restrained routine parts of public life.

Windsor Unified School District Superintendent Jeremy Decker, who was among local school officials who met with health officials last week, welcomed the county’s announcement Thursday.

“I want families to be able to watch their kids play and go to performances, so I’m appreciative that the order is slightly modified,” Decker said. “I’ll be honest, I was hoping for a little more, but at the same time I am appreciative that the move was made.”

In their initial letter to Mase, Decker, Vanden Heuvel and six other superintendents from the county’s largest school districts proposed a 20% capacity limit for indoor events. Vanden Heuvel said he had hoped health officials would have granted that request.

“In schools, we do large gatherings every day with kids and we’ve got one of the lowest transmission rates of any sector. So we know how to do it, we know how to manage it and I just think that for the well-being of our students as much normalcy as we can give them is needed.”

For some local businesses and organizations, the loosening of restrictions does not undo the initial financial hardship it caused.

Anne Clark, managing director of the 6th Street Playhouse, said her organization was forced to postpone two productions and layoff a number of staff. She said the playhouse had to exchange or process refunds for 600 patrons, with some too afraid to attend performances in the future.

“It's really, really hit our bottom line when we are just trying to finally get out of the black pit that was the pandemic and getting on track to reopening and having fuller houses,” Clark said.

The playhouse moved its production of Hair to Feb. 12-March 6, with a preview on Feb. 11. The production of “The Legend of Georgia McBride,” which was supposed to run this month, was pushed back to Feb. 17-March 20.

“Our ticket sales for ‘The Legend of Georgia McBride,’ which were doing really well have just plummeted,” Clark said. “’Hair’ was just taking off and people are now hesitant to come back.”

Clark pointed out that the order didn’t take into account the numerous COVID-19 protocols and precautions put in place at the playhouse. She said there have been no reported cases of COVID-19 among playhouse patrons or students in education programs.

“We have hospital grade air filtration systems in our theaters, we are requiring proof of vaccination and now boosters for all of our patrons, ages five and up. Masks are mandatory indoors at all times,” she said.

During the press briefing Thursday, Mase and Gore both took pains to explain that the restrictions on large gatherings were helping to curb the spread of the omicron mutation.

Mase said it appears new COVID-19 cases have peaked in Sonoma County, as they have in other Bay Area counties.

Earlier in the month, large and small gatherings were the cause of 50% of new cases where the source of transmission is known, officials said. But now, large and small gatherings account for about 20% of cases.

Since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, the county has typically issued such public health restrictions in concert with other Bay Area counties, but this time it acted alone in the face of an alarming spike in cases.

Gore defended the public health order while recognizing the hardship it has caused.

“And as much as we want to depend upon the other institutions in the Bay Area, we have to also take care of our own,” he said.

“Every one of our decisions ripples all the way into the emergency room,” he added. “Even if those of us who contract COVID and are vaccinated and boosted do not get urgently ill, if we infect others. If we infect entire (sports) teams, if we have our kids do that, then we have to take account for our downstream (impacts).”

Mase also noted that the ban on large gatherings allows for outdoor events to have more than 100 participants if space allows for 6 feet of social distancing. She said there currently were no plans to extend the ban beyond Feb. 10.

Mase on Thursday also announced a change to two other health orders, which require certain essential workers, including fire, police, ambulance, teachers, school staff, pharmacists and dentists, to receive a COVID-19 vaccine booster. Under the health orders, the these workers are required to show verification of having received a booster by Feb. 1 or submit to twice weekly COVID-19 testing and wear surgical grade masks or respirators.

Mase said the requirement for showing proof of booster vaccine verification and use of higher grade masks is still Feb. 1, but the requirement for twice weekly testing will be extended to March 1 or as soon as testing is readily available. The change, she said, is due to the current shortage of testing supplies.

On Thursday, health officials announced three more COVID-19 deaths, bringing the total number of pandemic-related fatalities in the county to 440.

The deaths include an unvaccinated woman between 50 and 60 who died Jan. 14; a vaccinated woman between 90 and 100, living in a skilled nursing home with underlying health conditions, who died Jan. 16; and an unvaccinated woman between 80 to 90, with an underlying medical condition, who died Jan. 19 after being hospitalized.

Thus far, 18 people have died this month. As of Wednesday, there were 109 people hospitalized with COVID-19, with 17 of them in intensive care, according to the state’s latest hospital data. Health officials say the vast majority of COVID-19 patients in ICU are unvaccinated.

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @pressreno.

You can reach Staff Writer Gus Morris at 707-304-9372 or gus.morris@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @JustGusPD.