Sacramento County Closes Bars Following State Recommendation, Highest Single-Day Increase In Cases

Updated 3:50 p.m.

Sacramento County health officials announced that they will be updating the county’s stay-at-home order to close all bars in the county starting at 6 p.m. Monday following a recommendation from the governor.

During a press briefing earlier today, Gov. Gavin Newsom recommended Sacramento, along with seven other counties across the state close bars. Yesterday state health officials mandated that seven counties, including Los Angeles and San Joaquin, close bars immediately.

The announcement comes as Sacramento County recorded its highest single-day coronavirus count since the county began keeping records at the end of February. The county recorded 228 new coronavirus cases on Monday, bringing the overall numbers to 3,004.

The second-highest daily recorded case count was on June 26, which saw an increase of 154 cases. On June 23 the county reported 131 new cases.

Sacramento County Director of Health Services Peter Beilenson said much of the increase in cases has been traced to bars and family gatherings.

“Based on data, there’s two major ways that are driving this increase; number one are bars, and number two are family gatherings, both indoors and outdoors usually of extended family,” Beilenson said. 

He's advising Sacramento residents to resist the urge to gather in groups of more than five people for the upcoming Fourth of July holiday. 

“We’re now at a tipping point, over the next two [to] three weeks, whether we’ll end up with a lot of cases that will flood the hospitals and require us to potentially go back on some of the restrictions,” he said. “Or we can bend the curve and try to make sure we stay at home as much as possible, particularly on the Fourth of July.”

In the past two to three weeks, the county’s case count has increased from 2,000 to over 3,000 and Beilenson said this can’t be attributed to increased testing. He added that hospitalizations and ICU admissions have gone up ten-fold in the past few weeks. 

“The level of worry should be greater right now because we have more cases than we’ve ever had before, so the chances of you being exposed to someone with the coronavirus is greater now than it was before,” he said.

Other counties have been asked to reinstate stay-at-home orders entirely as cases continue to rise across the state. California now has over 200,000 cases of coronavirus. 

Sacramento County is also lifting its ban on reusable plastic bags, which was due to go into effect following the expiration of an executive order by Newsom that suspended requirements of the ban. Some stores that have not allowed customers to bring reusable bags while shopping will continue to do so despite the ban being lifted.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the number of cases reported on the second-largest single-day increase in Sacramento County. That was 154 cases on June 26.