Sonoma County urges residents to stay home amid COVID surge

SONOMA COUNTY, Calif. (KGO) -- Sonoma County's health officer is urging residents to voluntarily limit going out as much as possible over the next 30 days to stop the spread of the omicron surge.

Residents are being asked to only leave their house for necessary trips like health care, school, work, and grocery shopping.

The county also issued a new health order that limits indoor events to a maximum of 50 people and outdoor events to no more than 100. For those at high risk for COVID, the maximum number of people is 12, unless it's a family gathering. The new rules take effect tomorrow and will last for a month.

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According to county data, half of Sonoma County's cases emerge from large events. Mase hopes this order will reduce the chances of people catching COVID-19 at events.

"While we may all be done with COVID, COVID is not done with us. due to the omicron variant, our case rates have never been higher and our hospitalizations are beginning to climb," said Sonoma County Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase.

The county's positive testing rate reached an all-time high of 16.5 percent this week, and case rates rose from 24.4 per 100,000 residents per day to more than 121 per 100,000 residents per day in the past two weeks.

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Sonoma County's health officer says all indications are the case surge will likely get worse in the coming weeks.

Sonoma County is the first and only county in the Bay Area to take these steps to fight the omicron variant.

Bay City News has contributed to this report.

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