Moving San Diego forward

At the beginning of this pandemic, public health officials told us the goal. We needed to stabilize our health care system, make sure we had enough hospital beds and secure a healthy supply of medical equipment including ventilators. Thanks to our public health officials and the people of San Diego County, we have achieved our goal.

Throughout our COVID-19 response, I’ve made my decisions based on facts, not media headlines. It is true, our positive COVID-19 numbers are rising, but that doesn’t tell the entire story. Even with increased testing and increased positive cases, hospitalizations continue to decrease in San Diego County. It is because counties are beginning to test people who don’t have symptoms, and most of those who are asymptomatic are younger people.

Our hospitals are stable at 330 beds taken for COVID-19 cases, that’s 0.5% of the positive cases in the hospital. In California, the average age of new confirmed cases has dropped from 50 to 38 years old. This change is positive news.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve successfully opened up more and more businesses. We knew there was going to be some speed bumps, but we are better off using a scalpel than a grenade to address issues as they occur. We need to use a focused approach that identifies where the problems are.

In light of all that, at our last board meeting my motion to open more businesses and activities was passed by a 4-1 vote. My push was to allow wedding receptions, hotel meetings and conferences, churches with appropriate social distancing, street fairs, playgrounds and team competitions without spectators.

We will now send a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom on behalf of the board of supervisors. It allows local control for our public health officials to implement as safe and appropriate.

We must continue to be safe and protect our most vulnerable, while progressing with our reopening.