The San Luis Obispo County Public Health Department released new safety guidelines ahead of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo students returning to in-person learning this week.
The guidance clarifies state and county requirements and provides recommended best practices for youth sports, performing arts and large gatherings.
County Public Health Information Officer Michelle Shoresman said there have been so many different guidelines released by different state and federal agencies recently that the county wanted to help clarify requirements.
“There’s a lot of different authorities on all these topics. There’s OSHA. There’s CDPH. There’s CDC. And many of those can be interpreted in different ways,” Shoresman said. “So we felt that it might be helpful to the businesses and groups in our community to combine them all into one location and provide the minimum of what’s required but also some ideas of best practices.”
Shoresman said Cal Poly’s guidelines are in line with the County’s recommendations for mitigating the public health risk of bringing students back to campus and in-person learning.
In order to return to campus, students must provide proof of vaccination or be tested twice weekly for COVID-19.
She said although the local community is seeing an increase in population with the return of students, they are mostly vaccinated.
“They’re doing all the right things, really,” Shoresman said. “As long as you’re vaccinated and/or provide proof of a negative COVID test before you come on campus, that’s really the most that we can expect in any kind of large-gathering type of situation.”
Shoresman said the County saw a slight decrease in the number of cases in the last week, although it is unclear whether that can be attributed to the County-wide mask mandate put into effect earlier this month.
“From Tuesday to Friday last week we added 253 cases and 556 over a week,” Shoresman said. “In weeks previous to that, we were seeing 550 or so in a period of three days between statistical updates.”
Shoresman said the County is also seeing a reduction in hospitalizations. But, she said, a high number of death certificates are pending, so it’s possible that number is going down as hospitalized patients are passing away.
“Just because our hospitalization numbers are going down, doesn’t mean that people are recovering,” Shoresman said.
To read the new guidelines for youth sports, click here.
To read the new guidelines for performing arts, click here.
To read the new guidelines for large events, click here.
