Napa County eases some of its stay at home order restrictions

NAPA, Calif. (KRON) – Napa County easing some of its stay at home order restrictions.

While the county doesn’t require you to wear face coverings in public, they strongly recommend you wear one and now they’re allowing some businesses, like golf courses and construction work to re-open.

On Wednesday, Napa County modified its shelter at home order, allowing for some businesses to get back to work, as long as social distancing protocols are still followed.

“We kind of call ourselves the outer edge of the Bay Area and we’re kind of similar to Solano and Santa Cruz and Monterey, those types of areas. We have a similar order as they have,” Brad Wagenknecht said.

Napa County Board Supervisor, Brad Wagenknecht, says the new revisions allow the use of golf courses and driving ranges.

“You have to have a marshal out there enforcing the social distancing. There’s no contact. You touch your own ball and you touch your own clubs. We don’t have flags out there. We have the cups turned upside down so you just hit the top of the cup and your in the hole,” Wagenknecht said.

The modified order also allows each of the following, only if physical distancing protocols are in place:

“We’re trying to do that balancing act of creating public safety with how do we have people still be able to live some sort of part of their lives?” Wagenknecht said.

Since stay at home orders in March, Supervisor Wagenknecht says the county’s seen huge losses in business, in a place that gets nearly 5 million visitors each year.

“This is a real hit. I think Napa is one of the ones that’s gonna be hardest hit in the Bay Area as far as the economy. A lot of our income comes from transient occupancy or hotels. The hotels are a big part. In the hotels, we were at 7% than we normally are in the month of April,” Wagenknecht said.

Now they’re closely watching the state and surrounding counties for what to do next.

“Didn’t put an end on this one. We’re thinking over the next week or two, the state is gonna change their order or do something with their order. We’re getting more testing, more testing is gonna be helpful to us to really set what we need to do in the future,” Wagenknecht said.