Governor Allows Hair Salons and Barber Shops to Open

19 Blue Salon on 19 W. Ortega Street (Photo captured before COVID-19, 19Blue/Instagram)

By edhat staff

Hair salons and barbershops are allowed to reopen in Santa Barbara County and most of California per the Governor’s announcement on Tuesday.

Governor Gavin Newsom stated the counties that have attested to the state that COVID-19 is under control locally can reopen those businesses effective immediately. Forty-seven of California’s 58 counties have met the requirements, including Santa Barbara, Ventura, and San Luis Obispo counties. 

The counties that have yet to meet the requirements are Alameda, Contra Costa, Imperial, Los Angeles, Marin, Monterey, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and Tulare.

Santa Barbara County Public Health Officer Dr. Henning Ansorg issued a new health officer order on Tuesday

Hair salons must follow a new set of health and safety guidelines in order to operate. Those new rules include:

  • Requiring the use of face coverings for staff and customers
  • Removing high-touch amenities like magazines, coffee makers from lobbies
  • Frequent disinfecting of booths, stations and tools
  • Contacting customers before appointments to ensure they aren’t exhibiting symptoms
  • Staggering appointments to reduce crowding

Services that cannot be performed with a face covering on both the worker and customer or that require touching of the customer’s face are not allowed.

Dr. Ansorg also addressed graduation ceremonies stating in-person events are allowed as long as activities are outdoors with attendees in motor vehicles from the same household, vehicles are maintaining six feet apart, and the total number of attendees is less than 100.

Graduates will be able to walk across the stage with their diploma for a photo as long as there is proper social distancing.

On Monday, the state released new guidelines for faith communities and in-store retail to reopen as long as their county was previously approved to move into Phase 2B.

Places of worship are allowed to reopen as long as they “limit attendance to 25% of a building’s capacity – or up to 100 attendees, whichever is lower” and follow social distancing rules. Such rules include wearing face masks, screening congregants and staff temperature and symptoms, no passing of offering plates or sharing items like prayer books, frequent disinfecting of pews/chairs and handrails as well as microphones and podiums, shorter services, open doors and windows, and allowing six feet of separation between people.

In-store retail is now allowed as long as businesses follow the proper guidelines that include social distancing, mask-wearing, and frequent disinfecting. 

The modifications to the stay-at-home order do not include gyms, nail salons, movie theatres, live sports, concerts, festivals, bars, or hotels for leisure/tourism to reopen.

Newsom stated new guidelines are expected soon for summer camps, childcare facilities, and professional sports without an audience.

More information can be found on the state’s website at covid19.ca.gov.


[Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to include the recent Health Order issued by the Santa Barbara County Public Health Officer]

Edhat Staff

Written by Edhat Staff

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40 Comments

  1. OK, so churches are open, bars with food are open, retail stores are open, restaurants with dine in ability are open, pre-schools are open…… so why, please explain why we can’t go out and play basketball or baseball OUTDOORS? Why are grads missing out on a huge part of their young lives? For some, high school graduation is the only commencement ceremony they’ll experience. Why are we not finding a way to allow the children to experience and participate in normal activities?

  2. Sorry to sound paranoid but something is very fishy here to me. Just 2 weeks or so ago, the phased plan pretty much indicated [and officials confirmed] that salons, bars, etc. would likely not open until possibly July. We aren’t even in June, why this sudden turn about? What changed? Are they trying to distract us from something? This is strange to me.

  3. My impression is that the authorities have somewhat given up, and are now just trying to keep ahead of the vocal “open now” crowd. Perhaps they figure people are opening anyway, on the sly, and they are aiming to at least get people to follow a few guidelines. I don’t know.

  4. AHCHOOO – yes, with some games that’s true. With baseball though, there’s not much heavy breathing close to other players due to the nature of the game. The ball can easily be sanitized between innings, so that’s it’s less risky than going to the grocery store and touching a box of cereal, fruit, bread, etc that 100 other people touched. I agree it’s riskier than no sports, but no sports is not viable. We need (the KIDS need) to get back to normal, especially when bars with food and churches are open now.

  5. A-1590532557 said, “Sorry to sound paranoid but something is very fishy here to me.” There is nothing fishy. The government was wrong from Newsom to the county to the city, and now they are scrambling to save face. They were wrong and persisted in being wrong because there was no consequence to them. From the beginning they all got their full salaries and benefits and no one was furloughed or laid off. The CDC released its estimates that under its most likely scenario, the overall death rate from coronavirus is 0.26%. CDC estimates a 0.4% fatality rate among those who are symptomatic and project a 35% rate of symptomatic cases among those infected, which drops the overall “infection fatality rate” to just 0.26%.

  6. A plane was flying around Santa Monica yesterday that said “Gruesome Newsom set us free”. Maybe this is his retaliation – he figures the ones who will rush out of the gate aren’t his voters anyway so they can be sacrificed? IDK, anything seems possible right now. This is a total change from what they were saying just recently so, who knows.

  7. ADAMVANT if you are citing from that chart that’s been circulating, figures are based only on deaths/cases up to March 31 only. Another possibility is, Newsom knows the people who want to open up are mostly not people who would vote for him so he’s willing to sacrifice you. Ever think of that? Wake up.

  8. See, I told all of you we were moving forward not looking back about a week ago. Those were the governors exact words today. Every thing is going back to normal each day. I’m going to get a haircut tomorrow!

  9. I posted a few weeks ago that Newsom was back peddling like a crab due to citizen pressure after he rescinded the beach closure orders. Of course, I was mocked and ridiculed by the usual people here, no surprise there. His recent accelerated rates of opening businesses is further proof that we, the people, can and will be heard. I wonder if he is using his “guided by science and data” argument to justify his decrees. Or is it just fear of losing a lot of his voter base in the future? Interesting that even his normally adoring Los Angeles Times has made light of this recently.

  10. “The government was wrong from Newsom to the county to the city, and now they are scrambling to save face. They were wrong and persisted in being wrong because there was no consequence to them. From the beginning they all got their full salaries and benefits and no one was furloughed or laid off. ” Nail on the head Adam! Would also like to point out again that last week SB City Council voted to give the city union employees a raise. A RAISE!! That’s CA government for you; their mistakes cost millions of jobs and businesses in the private sector and huge budget deficits for the State, County and City so… they… give… them…. raises…

  11. People, get a grip. It appears to me that what the Governor and the states are doing is following the facts/science. As the new data comes in they adjust the schedule to accommodate the new situation. The idea that this is all a big game, a conspiracy, is unhealthy. We need to listen without partisanship. I think things are opening too fast, others think they should have been open weeks ago. Let’s just let this play out with vituperation.

  12. have you .. been to state st recently?
    “hey guys, we’re re-opening! take a stroll downtown, pay no mind to all the permanently shuttered businesses that clearly ain’t comin back. don’t worry, it’ll all be fine as long as we keep waiting!”

  13. A hair stylist pal of mine detailed for me today the $800+ worth of PPE she has been required to stockpile, and her salon can’t open until all elements are in place. Many disposable necessaries are backordered. The clients must wait outside or in their cars until it is their turn, overall cutting the productivity of the salon by a hefty percentage since one person can’t be waiting for a process to complete while another is starting theirs. She had to buy a $100 temperature taking tool to check every worker as they arrive and every client. So every procedure will now have to be just that much more expensive to compensate for all this…

  14. It’s not the kids that are going bonkers over no sports, it’s the fanatic sports lovers with no other interests. Kids find the whole world interesting and make up things. Some guys have nothing to talk to each other about but sports, the modern equivalent to Roman games, a narcotic for the masses.

  15. I can see that this is a burden on salons and stylists, but I bet a good many customers won’t go unless these kinds of measures are in place, so they are necessary. There have been cases elsewhere of stylists infecting multiple clients.

  16. High Grade Fever is actually quite a late stage development of a COVID infection. checking peoples temp will do almost nothing to “stop the spread”. it’s another “too little too late” implementation. If Public Policy was actually science based, they would be using finger pulse oximeters to find that characteristic Low Blood Oxygen Level.

  17. It seems like he is accelerating where it makes sense – in the counties that seem to be under control. If he weren’t accelerating, people would complain also. When he does accelerate – based on data, and what is coming out from other states (more data), people complain too. Can’t really win either way, sooo….maybe stop complaining?

  18. JAYKAY hair stylists are the equivalent of political science majors. You know, people are supposed to pick fields where they can survive and be economically self sufficient/ Right? Isn’t that what the right wingers believe? Too bad so sad if you picked an industry that doesn’t pay well or allow you to save for a rainy day? Or are we on a different story now?

  19. What does it mean you ‘botched’ your effort? This sounds like an esthetic judgment that really can’t be that important in the grand scheme of things. People go about with bad hair days all the time and attend to much greater problems while at it. Like finding food, clean water and a place to sleep. Perspective please.

  20. NO THANKS, I’m going to stay safe and avoid all of these cesspools of germs for a while. Nothing is going to be normal yet for some time. Better safe than sorry. Odds are high that we will see a second wave.

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