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Local public health and emergency officials will look to Del Norte County’s businesses to help develop a path to a new normal in the midst of COVID-19.

The Economic Resiliency Task Force will hold meetings next week focusing on those working in the personal care services, retail, tourism and entertainment, restaurants and in-home services sectors. They plan to share their insights with the Del Norte County Public Health Branch.

“We know that our community’s different than other communities and we have amazing professionals,” Holly Wendt, the task force’s team leader, told the Wild Rivers Outpost on Friday. “We want to have meetings with business owners in those fields. We’ll post up some federal and state guidelines for best practices on our web page, but we want to meet with them and have them say how they would implement these in order to open safely.”

The meetings will be held from 2-3 p.m. Monday through Friday. People can sign up for them by emailing hwendt@crescentcity.org.

Wendt, Crescent City’s recreation and events director, City Manager Eric Wier and representatives with the Crescent City-Del Norte County Chamber of Commerce created the Economic Resiliency Task Force to help small businesses struggling through the COVID-19 pandemic.

A branch of the Del Norte Emergency Operations Center, the task force created a Small Business Revitalization Loan program with dollars from the Wild Rivers Community Foundation. They also help business owners access coronavirus relief programs through the Small Business Administration.

These meetings come as Public Health Officer Dr. Warren Rehwaldt begins to circulate a draft plan for relaxing stay at home measures among local city, county and Crescent City-Del Norte Chamber of Commerce representatives.

Bringing it up at State Sen. Mike McGuire’s telephone town hall meeting Wednesday, Rehwaldt said he wanted to let Del Norters know their emergency officials weren’t ignoring the question of resuming a semblance of normalcy, though the plan isn’t yet available to the general public.

“I wanted to get some basic principles for people to start thinking about in terms of getting a personal plan for business to put down on paper,” he said. “I think we’re going to be given some freedom here maybe three weeks from now if all goes well at the state level.”

The first five meetings will begin Monday with a focus on personal care services — hair salons, barbershops, tattoo parlors, massage therapists and other services that require person-to-person contact.
Retailers are urged to take part in Tuesday’s meeting.

Wednesday will focus on tourism and entertainment including boat and raft tours, fishing guides and businesses such as Ocean World, Wendt said.

The Economic Resiliency Task Force hopes to hear from restauranteurs on Thursday. Friday’s meeting will focus on those who provide services in people’s homes including electricians and house cleaners.

Wendt said she, chamber representatives and Malex Consulting owner Rob Holmlund will gather business owners’ opinions and insights and take them to Rehwaldt. Future meetings will focus on realtors, professional businesses such as accountants and lodging facilities like hotels and Airbnbs, she said, though anyone can tune in to the meetings.

These meetings come as communities statewide are wrapping their heads around California’s “Roadmap to Modify the Stay-at-Home Order.” Issued by Governor Gavin Newsom on April 15, the roadmap is a four-stage approach that starts with making the essential workforce environment as safe as possible and ends with lifting Newsom’s stay-at-home order.

According to the roadmap, California is currently in Stage 1, which focuses on increasing testing capacity, contact tracing, personal protective equipment availability and ensuring hospitals can handle a potential surge in COVID-19 cases.

Stage 1 also calls for preparing sector-by-sector guidelines for an expanded workforce.

Counties can begin to relax their own safety measures in Stage 2, which will occur through a statewide modification of Newsom’s stay-at-home order.

According to Rehwaldt, the basic principles he wanted businesses to consider in his draft plan for reopening include social distancing, mask-wearing, allowing their employees enough opportunities to wash their hands, providing hand sanitizer an dwiping down surfaces in public places. Many have already tackled these, especially essential businesses like banks, he said.

“There are some businesses that involve interaction that have an even higher standard,” Rehwaldt said. “A beauty salon or a manicurist or a tattoo parlor. They’re up close and personal. That, by definition, is close contact. Those folks will have to take even more steps, but if they do, they can get back in business.”

At McGuire’s town hall meeting, Rehwaldt also wanted to give folks an update on the county’s ability to test for the novel coronavirus. He spoke to Humboldt County’s new community testing site, which the state considers a regional asset and began operating on Monday.

In addition to testing those who are considered essential workers or care for someone who could potentially be at risk for complications if they are exposed to the virus, Rehwaldt said they hope to find out if those who are mildly symptomatic are positive for COVID-19.

“One reason we want to have testing ramped up, is we’ll get a clearer picture of what a jump in a case count really means,” he said. “Is it more disease or just because we’re getting better at testing? We want testing to increase first.”

Del Norte County has had three confirmed cases of COVID-19, all of whom have recovered, according to the Public Health Branch. There have been a total of 373 tests administered as of 9:41 a.m. Friday. The test results for 21 tests are pending and 349 have returned negative.

Another component the Economic Resiliency Task Force is tackling as public health officials begin to think about reopening things is employees’ comfort level about returning to work, Wendt said.

“There are basic guidelines — CDC and state guidelines — people need masks, they need to be separate, they need to wash hands, frequently touched items need to be disinfected regularly,” she said. “If we can guarantee that businesses are doing that and they know what they’re supposed to be doing, we can show it to their employees and patrons as well.”

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