CALIFORNIA — A Southern California county was removed from the state’s coronavirus monitoring list Sunday, starting the clock for all public schools there to potentially reopen in early September.
Orange County joins San Diego in coming off the list, while Riverside, Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Imperial counties remain listed— although Riverside County is close to falling off. Read more: Riverside County Closer To Meeting CA’s Coronavirus Benchmarks
The state mandates a county must be off the watch list for 15 days before all schools can reopen. On Friday, it was announced that Riverside County’s TK-6 schools can apply for a waiver to reopen, despite being on the state watch list. Read more: Riverside County Elementary Schools Can Now Seek Reopening
Orange County’s data on hospitalizations and other key metrics have been moving in the right direction, with the rate of county residents testing positive for COVID-19 at 5-point-4 percent, below the state’s desired threshold of 8 percent.
As of Sunday’s reporting from the California Department of Public Health, Riverside’s positivity rate was at 10 percent.
Underscoring the positive trends in Orange County, health officials there reported just 153 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 and one additional death Sunday, bringing the county’s totals to 45,954 cases and 897 fatalities.
Riverside County does not release weekend COVID-19 numbers. On Friday, Riverside County reported 526 new cases, bringing total coronavirus cases to 49,482 — with 26,792 of those people having recovered from the illness. The death toll stood at 927, with five new deaths reported Friday.
In Orange County, the data on hospitalizations continued to move in the right direction, with 380 people hospitalized and 111 of those in intensive care. Those numbers were 392 and 110 on Saturday, 397 and 117 on Friday, and 400 and 118 on Thursday, according to the Orange County Health Care Agency.
In Riverside County, hospitalizations have been declining since mid-July, and the state has indicated the county is meeting benchmarks. As of Friday, 252 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized, with 81 in ICU.
Orange County could be placed back on the state’s monitoring list should it be flagged for exceeding any one of state metrics for three consecutive days. Those metrics are the case rate, the percentage of positive tests, the average number of tests a county is able to perform daily, changes in the number of hospitalized patients and the percentage of ventilators and intensive care beds available.
The decision to reopen schools would still be left to individual districts. Orange County officials say 24 elementary schools have already been approved to reopen, including six in the Los Alamitos Unified School District.
For parents still leery of returning students to classrooms, Dr. Clayton Chau, Orange County’s interim chief health officer and director of the Orange County Health Care Agency, said the county “encourages” them to continue online learning, “especially children who are at a higher risk.”
The county will provide tests for staff and students and a “full medical team” that includes pediatricians, while infectious disease experts from Children’s Hospital of Orange County and UC Irvine “will be standing by to assist when needed,” Chau said.
Wednesday was the first day the county fell below the state’s monitoring thresholds, Chau said.
It is possible various business sectors that are shut down for commerce indoors may be allowed to return to normal, Chau said. County officials are expecting “new guidance” from the state this week.
—City News Service contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on the Murrieta Patch