Hair salons, barber shops, malls allowed to reopen

The county of Sonoma announced Sunday evening that barber shops, hair salons and malls in the county will be allowed to reopen with modifications, effective Monday, Aug. 31. The reopening comes days after a new structure for California county reopenings was announced by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The new framework, Blueprint for a Safer Economy, separates counties into one of four colors based on various COVID-19 metrics. Sonoma County has a purple rating, meaning its statistics show the virus as being “widespread.”

Counties in the “widespread” tier exhibit greater than seven new cases per 100,000 people per day (based on a seven day average with a seven day lag) and have greater than an 8% testing positivity rate (based on a seven day average with a seven day lag). To advance to a different tier, counties have to meet the next tier’s requirements for two weeks and must meet certain health equity measures, such as testing access, data collection and outreach to heavily impacted communities.
The new framework takes the place of the state virus watchlist, which has been used since the beginning of July to track virus statistics in counties across the state, as well as determine to what extent counties and businesses were allowed to reopen.
Hair salons and barber shops were initially allowed to reopen in the end of May, but were shuttered again on July 13 due to rising virus cases.
While the county health department has OKed barber shops, hair salons and malls to reopen, they can only do so with specific restrictions in place. Malls in counties that have been designated as having widespread transmission, for example, can only open with 25% capacity and common areas and food courts have to remain closed.
Going forward, businesses sectors and activities will be allowed to reopen based on a set of risk-based criteria. According to the California Department of Health, these criteria include:
●    Ability to accommodate face covering wearing at all times (e.g. eating and drinking would require removal of face covering)
●    Ability to physically distance between individuals from different households
●    Ability to limit the number of people per square foot
●    Ability to limit duration of exposure
●    Ability to limit amount of mixing of people from differing households and communities
●    Ability to limit amount of physical interactions of visitors/patrons
●    Ability to optimize ventilation (e.g. indoor vs outdoor, air exchange and filtration)
●    Ability to limit activities that are known to cause increased spread (e.g. singing, shouting, heavy breathing; loud environs will cause people to raise voice)
As of Aug. 29 at 8:30 p.m., Sonoma County had 2,541 active cases, 3,035 recovered cases and 78 deaths.
“We feel comfortable in opening up this sector of our economy as the data show we’ve had only a handful of cases from indoor salons,” Sonoma County Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase said in a statement. “But we still have a ways to go before we will be able to move to the next tier and allow more activities to reopen under the state’s blueprint.”