Rural Northern California county reopens after brief shutdown over first-ever COVID-19 cases

Lassen County in far Northern California on Thursday announced it would reverse course and allow businesses to reopen once again, only days after local health officials said their first-ever detected COVID-19 cases posed a “serious problem.”

Under the new order, residents and visitors are still required to practice social distancing. In-store retail, dine-in restaurants, places of worship, hair salons and barber shops are allowed to resume business with proper modifications after being told on Tuesday they’d have to step back for seven days.

Thursday’s order came after local health officials said two residents had tested positive for COVID-19, and two additional people who’d been in contact with them later contracted the disease. A fifth person also tested positive. It was the first time the new coronavirus was confirmed to have been spreading in Lassen County.

That announcement prompted a seven-day pause on reopening the economy in Lassen, which has a population of about 30,000, many of whom work for the multiple prisons and conservation camps in the county. That pause order lasted two days.

Officials on Thursday said they had successfully stopped any broader outbreak, and had reviewed who the infected people had come into contact with.

“After evaluating the data that has been collected from our contact tracing investigations, I have concluded that Lassen County has the ability and capacity to rapidly implement strategies to mitigate further transmission of the disease should a future outbreak occur,” Public Health Officer Dr. Kenneth Korver said in Thursday evening’s order.

Counties across California this week have begun experiencing the new start-and-stop reality. Lassen County was the first in the state known to have retracted its reopening plan. Sonoma County this week also eased off the gas pedal for reopening businesses as the number of cases continued to climb. Some public health officials have said counties are moving too quickly.

Push-pull over fairness, need for shutdown

David Teeter, vice-chair of the Lassen County Board of Supervisors, said the decision to reverse an early order was made by the county’s doctor, not elected officials. While some on the board and many in the county have argued for a more aggressive reopening plan, Teeter said the back-and-forth this week was “not a political decision.”

“We know there isn’t going to be a vaccine for this virus for quite some time. It’s hard to figure out the true severity of it in rural areas because we’ve never seen the effect of it here,” Teeter said. “But our goal is to do as many normal things as we can and to enable as many normal activities as we possibly can while keeping a safe environment for our citizens.

The quick on-off toggle was effective this week, county officials said. Teeter agreed and added it showed the local decision-making in rural counties can be more effective than only mandates from Sacramento.

But, he said, it remains to be seen how many more flips of the switch will occur in the weeks and months to come — and how likely people are to accommodate the constantly shifting rules.

“The citizens did it this time,” said Teeter, a Democrat in one of the most conservative counties in the state. “There is a very definite push-pull when it comes to things like following rules that they’re uncertain of the efficacy of or the fairness of.

“But they did it this time.”

This story was originally published May 29, 2020 at 1:32 PM with the headline "Rural Northern California county reopens after brief shutdown over first-ever COVID-19 cases."