LAKEPORT— The Lakeport City Council heard an update on the city’s current COVID-19 response efforts and gave direction to city staff to maintain a robust education and enforcement operation at their initial meeting of 2021 Tuesday.
The discussion centered on what is currently working with COVID-19 response efforts, what needs to change or if there are new efforts or areas city staff should explore to improve this process.
City Manager Kevin Ingram said the fluid nature of the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the city to constantly be reviewing and making changes to their response efforts to the pandemic.
“The city along with Lake County are experiencing its largest surge in the number of new COVID-19 cases to date” Ingram said. At press time Wednesday, the total cases in the county had surpassed 2,000 (at 2,029) with 225 still active and 25 deaths. A dozen were currently hospitalized.
Officials noted that there are three broad categories which are part of the city’s COVID-19 response efforts: community outreach, business outreach and compliance efforts and activities.
The community outreach side of the response consists mostly on the city continuing to provide services to the community, making sure citizens are informed and remain safe. This includes having more available testing within city limits.
The business outreach portion includes the city getting out information to the local businesses and helping them stay open during the pandemic while also keeping them compliant to city policies.
Officials added that for compliance efforts and activities, the city has been working closely with the Lake County Public Health Department to keep the citizens of Lakeport safe and healthy when they go into local businesses.
Ingram added this has been the most difficult piece of their response efforts within the city, adding that city staff wants to make sure the COVID-19 safety guidelines are being followed while also allowing businesses to provide essential services to people.
“I’m hopeful that the vaccine rollout will aid significantly at getting a handle on this crisis, but in the meantime we are experiencing, at a national level, the state level and at a local level some unprecedented surges in new cases,” Ingram said.
He added that even after the public health side of the pandemic is over there will be more to deal with in regards to the economic and political side of it.
Lakeport Councilmember Mireya Turner said she would like to see the city continue to focus on its enforcement, starting with education in regards to COVID-19.
“It’s ongoing and it is well known in the community that the businesses are not supporting the health regulations for COVID-19,” Turner said. “So let’s take a look at that but let’s continue in that process we already have set up. I think it’s great and I think we need to focus more on supporting our local businesses.”
Ingram said the city will keep their robust outreach and education to local businesses and to the community to create awareness to any new and current information about the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the past few weeks Lake County has been in the Purple Tier, which places restrictions on many non-essential indoor businesses and activities.
In an effort to address the growing spread of the virus statewide and to keep it from overwhelming critical ICU capacity in hospitals, recently California Gov. Gavin Newsom instituted criteria for additional stay at home orders if a region’s ICU capacity drops below 15 percent.
Lake County is located within the Northern California region and currently the region’s ICU capacity has remained between 25 and 30 percent.
With input from the city council and the city’s current COVID-19 response efforts, officials said the staff hopes to avoid the stricter stay at home order.
