SLO County says to stick to a ‘social bubble’ to stop coronavirus spread. What is that?
Now that businesses are reopening and people are emerging from their government-ordered isolation, San Luis Obispo County health officials are recommending news ways for people to slow the spread of coronavirus.
San Luis Obispo County public health officer Dr. Penny Borenstein is advising residents to stick to “social bubbles” when hanging out with friends.
“I’m going to introduce a new term: social bubble,” Borenstein said during a media briefing July 1. “If you are connecting with other families, please do so only with one or two families, and stick within that social group, or social bubble, for a period of no less than three weeks.”
A study published in June in the research journal Nature found that groups that limited themselves to contact with one or two other households, rather than several, significantly spread out the length of time it took for infection to reach them or spread to others.
Basically, they flattened the curve.
For this reason, health officials across the United States are recommending people form social bubbles or “quarantine pods” to help slow the virus’ spread.
There are various ways to go about forming a bubble, and they all have various levels of efficiency.
One alternative is to create a bubble with two or three families or households and agree to limit your socialization entirely to that group.
You can also consider narrowing your interactions to only people who live in your neighborhood or are within your own age group. A separate study in Nature indicated that inter-generational contact, particularly within a household, increased the spread of infectious disease.
In San Luis Obispo County, forming social bubbles and sticking to them could help slow down the explosive increase in local cases from recent weeks.
On Monday, the county announced it had added 68 new cases over the holiday weekend, bringing the total number of active cases in San Luis Obispo County to 198.
At the July 1 media briefing, Borenstein likened social bubbles to cohorts in schools, and noted that after three weeks, you could potentially move to another bubble if needed.
“Don’t be getting together with this family or this friend on this day, and then the next day a different one and then the third day another group of individuals, because that is how we can move disease more quickly through our community,” Borenstein said.
Borenstein continued to urge people to not get together in large numbers, especially at parties or at bars.
This story was originally published July 7, 2020 at 9:47 AM.
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