On Aug. 17, County Supervisor Greg Cox gave an update on COVID-19 details and the disproportionate impact on South Bay communities at the South Bay Forum general membership meeting.
Cox said the continuing COVID-19 pandemic is disproportionately hitting South County and is a major concern for him and many people who live in the South County area.
“I spent a lot of time talking about what the county is doing in order to try and better address that,” said Cox. “We have a number of testing sites going on around the county of San Diego, but literally half of them are in South County because that is where the greatest number of cases are.”
Cox said the Board of Supervisors is focusing on that disparity. It recently opened a testing station at the San Ysidro Port of Entry PedEast crossing on Aug. 12 and expanded hours on Aug. 17, providing around 200 tests a day.
“In addition to the testing we are doing, we are using our T3 strategy — testing, tracing and treatment,” he said. “Then if they actually need help in being housed, we have hotel rooms available so they don’t have to actually be in contact with their family and possibly infect them, and making sure that people get the health treatment they need with their healthcare providers so they can have a mild case of COVID-19.”
Cox said the board approved a contract last week entering an agreement with Paradise Valley Hospital and Bayview Hospital in Chula Vista to implement a crisis stabilization unit for mental health services. He describes it as an urgent care center and, along with this location, there will be about five strategically positioned around the county.
“What that will do is hopefully when law enforcement is out and sees someone acting out, or gets a call that someone is acting kind of strange, instead of arresting them or taking them down to the county jail or the Chula Vista jail, they have a place to take them and get them stabilized.”
Cox said he talked about current conditions in San Diego County.
“The numbers are looking better now,” said Cox. “We are under the governor’s direction now, officially coming off the state’s watch list Aug. 18. That is a good thing. For three days in a row we are below 100 cases per 100,000 population and if we continue in that vein over the next 14 days then the schools around San Diego County K-12 can be allowed to reopen without having to file waivers with the county of San Diego.”
Cox said the board does not know what that means for businesses yet as the governor has yet to provide further guidance on when businesses can open and have in-store services.
“I was on a conference call Monday with Mark Ghaly, the secretary of California Health and Human Services Agency, and pressed him on when we would get some guidance,” said Cox. “San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and I sent a letter Aug. 14 to the governor pleading with him to give us some guidance so we can let businesses know when they can reasonably work toward reopening. We are hoping to get some guidance from Ghaly by the end of the week and further guidance from the state.”
South Bay Forum originated in 1998 as a political action group by a group of Latino leaders, ending most activities in 2013. It relaunched the group in May 2019 with in-person meetings offering membership to anyone who wants to build a stronger South County that creates opportunities for all to advance together.
