Marin looks ahead as COVID-19 crisis enters second year

Nearly a year after she was hospitalized with one of the first cases of COVID-19 in Marin, Stacy Allegro is feeling grateful to be alive.

“I have a renewed appreciation for life,” Allegro said in a phone interview from her home in Novato. “Just taking a breath is still a great feeling for me. Walking outside is a great feeling.”

It took five months after her stint at the Kaiser hospital in San Rafael until Allegro, 59, began to feel healthy again. She still has lingering health issues from the virus, including a tremor in her vocal cords that has rendered her unable to sing.

“But I feel pretty good,” Allegro said. She’s taking daily hikes with her dog and can now swim two lengths of a pool underwater.

Now, Allegro’s focus has begun to shift from her health to her career. Like many Marin residents, she is piecing together the parts of her life that have been upended by the coronavirus crisis as the second year of the pandemic begins to unfold.

About 5.4% of Marin workers were unemployed in January, the most recent month for which data are available. That includes Allegro, who closed her Fit First Pilates studios in Novato and Corte Madera in May. She’s now considering a switch out of the fitness industry and into writing, a former job she had and something she considers more “pandemic-proof.”

Throughout Marin, the most severe pandemic job losses have been in the leisure and hospitality industries, including bars, restaurants and hotels. According to a recent Marin Economic Forum analysis of unemployment data for December, nearly 1 in 4 Marin workers were unemployed in those industries. About 1 in 5 people who worked at fitness studios or hair and nail salons were unemployed that month.

Economists expect the American labor market to return to its pre-pandemic levels in 2024, according to Robert Eyler, the Marin Economic Forum’s chief economist.

“But so much is predicated upon the idea that we’re going to get these vaccines in people’s arms, we’re going to see immunity kick up and we’re going to see case loads fall down,” Eyler said this month during an online Economic Forum seminar, Forecasting the Future 2021.

“We do not want this fall and winter coming up … to be a repeat performance of what we just saw,” Eyler said. “That’s a critical factor in terms of having a smooth recovery.”

Two weeks ago, Marin advanced into the second-most-restrictive tier in California’s economic reopening plan. That allowed restaurants, gyms, movie theaters and museums to open inside, with limited capacity, for the first time in months. The county is expected to enter the next tier, orange, by the end of the month, according to health officials. That will allow many businesses to increase capacity, including restaurants, which can ramp up to 50% indoor capacity. Bars will also be allowed to reopen outside.

Marin could hit the least-restrictive yellow tier by mid-April, said Dr. Matt Willis, the county’s public health officer. That would allow bars to open indoors at 25% capacity.

Marin’s coronavirus outlook has improved dramatically since coronavirus vaccines arrived in mid-December, Willis said. So far, about 28% of Marin residents have received at least one dose of a vaccine, including about 75% of residents age 65 and older.

Willis said the county is on track to expand vaccine eligibility to all adults by May and have all adults vaccinated by the beginning of June. That projection, however, relies on the supply of vaccines continuing to increase, he said.

The results of the vaccine rollout have been impressive, Willis said. While Marin recorded 39 deaths from COVID-19 in January, there were just six deaths in February, a decrease of about 85%.