April 29, 2021
The big news this week on the COVID-19 front is the announcement by the CDC that fully vaccinated people don’t need to wear a mask outdoors except under certain circumstances. Here’s a summary:

Fully vaccinated people can:
  • Visit with other fully vaccinated people indoors without wearing masks or physical distancing
  • Visit with unvaccinated people (including children) from a single household who are at low risk for severe COVID-19 disease indoors without wearing masks or physical distancing
  • Participate in outdoor activities and recreation without a mask, except in certain crowded settings and venues
  • Resume domestic travel and refrain from testing before or after travel or self-quarantine after travel
  • Refrain from testing before leaving the United States for international travel (unless required by the destination) and refrain from self-quarantine after arriving back in the United States
  • Refrain from testing following a known exposure, if asymptomatic, with some exceptions for specific settings
  • Refrain from quarantine following a known exposure if asymptomatic
  • Refrain from routine screening testing if asymptomatic and feasible
 
For now, fully vaccinated people should continue to:
  • Take precautions in indoor public settings like wearing a well-fitted mask
  • Wear well-fitted masks when visiting indoors with unvaccinated people who are at increased risk for severe COVID-19 disease or who have an unvaccinated household member who is at increased risk for severe COVID-19 disease
  • Wear well-fitted masks when visiting indoors with unvaccinated people from multiple households
  • Avoid indoor large-sized in-person gatherings
  • Get tested if experiencing COVID-19 symptoms
  • Follow guidance issued by individual employers
  • Follow CDC and health department travel requirements and recommendations
1 million fully vaccinated
San Diego County is continuing to report good progress in its vaccination efforts:
  • Almost 3 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been delivered to the region, and nearly 2.69 million have been administered. This number includes both county residents and those who work in San Diego County.
  • Overall, close to 1.45 million county residents have received at least one shot of the two-dose vaccine. That’s 53.8% of those eligible.
  • Of those vaccinated to date, over 1 million county residents, or 37.4% of San Diegans 16 and older, are fully immunized.
  • The goal is to fully vaccinate 75% of San Diego County residents 16 and older or 2,017,011 people. To date, 71.8% of the goal population has received at least one vaccine and 49.9% are fully vaccinated.
  • Veterans Affairs doses received and administered, as well as people vaccinated and fully vaccinated, are now included in the numbers and percentages above.

Lowest vaccination rates
Those 16 to 19 years old and people who live in East County have the lowest rates of vaccination here in San Diego County. The county is conducting targeted outreach efforts to encourage vaccination. In the South Bay, where many predicted vaccine rates would be low, the county has made a big effort to promote vaccine awareness, and so far, the vaccination rates are good.
 
The north coastal region has the second to the lowest rate of vaccination. We don’t have figures for just Carlsbad, but overall this is a little troubling. Please be sure to get vaccinated if you haven’t been already and encourage your friends and family members to do the same.
Breakthrough cases
Breakthrough cases refer to people who catch COVID-19 after being fully vaccinated. Yesterday county officials said the percentage of these cases in San Diego County is lower than the national average -- .023%. Of those 55% were asymptomatic, none required hospitalization, and there have been no deaths. Most of these cases were among health care workers. Experts say this is a sign the vaccine is working.

Second dose appointments
You may have read news stories in the past week reporting that people are skipping or just missing their second dose appointments. County officials said yesterday they are not seeing this happen in any significant way here in San Diego.

No “vaccine passport”
Now that we have different rules depending on a person’s vaccination status, county officials were asked yesterday whether they plan to create a so-called vaccine passport so people can prove whether or not they are fully vaccinated. The answer was no, consistent with the state and federal governments’ plans.

Guidance has been provided for entities that want to institute a way to check vaccination status. For example, some stadiums have created sections for people who are fully vaccinated, and some businesses offer special deals for people who are vaccinated. But it sounds like there are no plans to create an official government system for this.

Walk-ups now allowed
If you still need to be vaccinated, the county is now allowing walk-up vaccinations (no appointment needed) at many of its vaccination sites, during certain days and times. You can get the details on the county’s website.

Case rates
San Diego County’s state-calculated, adjusted case rate announced Tuesday is 6.2 cases per 100,000 residents. This is up another.1 since the week prior (which was up .1 over the week before that). Health officials are not worried about us falling back to the red tier because the state is now weighing more factors than before.

The California Department of Public Health says unless there are extenuating circumstances, such as low rate of vaccinations, a county will only move to a more restrictive tier if hospitalizations are increasing significantly among vulnerable individuals, especially among vaccinated individuals, and both testing positivity and adjusted case rates show a concerning increase in transmission. Currently, the testing positivity percentage here is 2.3%, placing the county in the orange tier range.
Community outbreaks
I haven’t been reporting lately on community outbreaks, but I don’t want you to think that’s because they’re not still happening. They are.
  • Five new community outbreaks were confirmed April 27 in San Diego County: two in TK-12th grade school settings, one in a faith-based setting, one in a government setting and one in a grocery/retail setting.
  • In the past seven days (April 21 through April 27), 23 community outbreaks were confirmed.

A community setting outbreak is defined as three or more COVID-19 cases in a setting and in people of different households over the past 14 days.

School cases
At yesterday’s county news conference, a reporter asked if the county has seen a lot of cases from schools now that more are open for in-person classes. In the past 14 days, there have been 109 cases reported in K-12 students. This is not unexpected, officials said. To date, there have been 3,100 cases reported among kids in this age range. The county’s public health officer said she expects vaccines to be available for those 12 to 15 years old soon.

Testing update
COVID-19 testing continues to be widely available, with 23,051 tests reported to the county on April 27, of which 1% were positive. The 14-day rolling average percentage of positive cases is 1.6%, well below the target of less than 8.0%.

At yesterday’s news conference, county officials said that more people are getting antigen tests (the ones that show whether you have antibodies) instead of PCR tests, the one that shows if you have COVID-19 now. Antigen tests don’t have to be reported to the county, so the actual number of people getting COVID-19 tests is likely much higher.
 
6-foot distance indoors might not be enough
A new study by MIT shows that maintaining a 6-foot distance from others while indoors is not a fail-safe way to protect against COVID-19 transmission. This is because not all indoor areas are the same. The findings might seem like common sense, but now scientists have had time to learn more about COVID-19 spread and document the findings. The main points from the MIT study include:

  • To protect against airborne transmission, exposure time, room size, ventilation and human activity must also be considered
  • Standing 6 feet apart is safe for a few seconds, but maybe not for a few hours
  • 25 people are safer in a large gymnasium than in a crowded bar
  • At any distance, remaining quiet and calm is safer than singing or exercising

This is consistent with existing health guidance, and I should note this study did not account for people being vaccinated. Mask use was found to offer the best protection, and well-ventilated spaces are safer than ones using air filters only.

Researchers stressed that they don’t want people to misinterpret the results by thinking social distancing is not important, just that it alone may not protect against spread, especially if exposure time is more than a few minutes.

REAL ID deadline extended
The Department of Homeland Security is extending the REAL ID full enforcement date by 19 months, from Oct. 1, 2021, to May 3, 2023, due to circumstances resulting from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. A REAL ID is the same as your usual driver’s license or state ID card except it has extra security features.
 
Beginning May 3, 2023, every air traveler 18 years of age and older will need a REAL ID-compliant driver’s license or identification card, state-issued enhanced driver’s license, or another TSA-acceptable form of identification at airport security checkpoints for domestic air travel. 
 
Here’s a link to the California DMV page where you can learn more about the REAL ID program and make an appointment to get yours.
 
Lumber prices increasing
Among the many economic effects of the pandemic is the price of lumber. According to the National Association of Home Builders, lumber prices have been especially volatile in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic due to increased demand and supply-side constraints. This has added nearly $36,000 to the average price of a new single-family home, and nearly $13,000 to the price of a multifamily home since April 2020. 
 
City finances
We had a special City Council meeting Tuesday to talk about the status of city finances, among other topics. The City Council voted to make changes to our COVID-19 business relief loans to provide greater flexibility to businesses in need.
 
The City Council also got an update from our finance team on how the pandemic is affecting city revenues. Not surprisingly, our tourism sector has been hit hard, although due to pent up demand, this is expected to turn around. Many businesses in our key industries, such as life sciences, have actually done very well over the past year. Property taxes are strong.
 
The table below shows a snapshot of how revenues for our day-to-day city services compare to this time last year – down overall 6%. We are in the final stages of preparing the city budget for next fiscal year, which starts July 1. Even as things begin to return to normal, we will continue to be very cautious with spending since no one really knows yet how long the recovery will take or what it will look like.
Please keep an eye out for our weekly e-newsletter on Friday for all the details from this week’s City Council meeting, including a comprehensive package of actions to combat homelessness, managing growth and new resources for our Fire Department to enable first responders to respond to calls more quickly.

Today’s update was a long one – thanks for hanging in there until the end. We are expecting beautiful summerlike weather today, and for those fully vaccinated, the ability to take a break from mask wearing, as long as you’re not in a crowd. That’s progress we should all celebrate!  

Scott Chadwick
City Manager
City of Carlsbad | Website