Sacramento County Health Director Dr. Peter Beilenson is estimating the regional stay-at-home order will last longer than its designated three weeks.
The county has just gone into its first full week under the stay-at-home order. The state-mandated order went into effect on December 10.
According to Dr. Beilenson, the county is currently experiencing the worst of the coronavirus pandemic and he isn't hopeful about the upcoming holidays.
"We're now at about 900 to 1,000 cases per day, which is up from 70 back in November," said Dr. Beilenson.
The spike in cases is due to previous Thanksgiving gatherings.
"The cases now are Thanksgiving," he said. "the cases before when we had a few hundred cases per day were due to Halloween gatherings. They're overwhelmingly due to gatherings."
With Christmas just one week away, Dr. Beilenson says things are unlikely to re-open until the surge from holiday gatherings have died down.
“Since there’s three weeks guaranteed, I’m guessing there will be another five weeks after that, probably eight weeks total, because of the gatherings that are going to go on in the holiday season,” he said.
Dr. Beilenson doesn't think people will follow the advice of health experts.
“If they could just not gather this one year, it would be great because we’d be able to bend the curve and be able to move into the vaccination season with a real shot at, no pun intended, with a real shot at getting things back to normalcy by the summertime."
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