MARTINEZ — Arrests that result in jail bookings have dropped to staggeringly low rates throughout Contra Costa, in response to state and local directives aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19 in the county jail system.

Over the past 30 days, the rate of new inmates being booked in Contra Costa jails fell by 84 percent, from a norm of roughly 60 per day to roughly 10 per day, Sheriff David Livingston told the county Board of Supervisors at its Tuesday meeting. The jail system is at 36 percent capacity, and the bulk of the roughly 700 remaining inmates were booked on violent felony charges, Livingston said.

The sharp drop is a result of statewide and local changes aimed at reducing incarceration and jail intake; incoming inmates represent one of the biggest risks of a coronavirus outbreak in the county jail system. So far, no Contra Costa inmates have tested positive, but a lone staff member has, county health officials said.

“The first and most important thing is to reduce the density of the jails,” said Dr. Ori Tzvieli, a health officer and medical director with Contra Costa Health and Human Services. “We’ve really brought in fewer patients. We’re also doing screening of all staff who come into the jail … We are quarantining inmates when they first arrive and checking them for symptoms, (giving them) temperature checks and system monitoring.”

Because they have fluctuating populations and force folks into close proximity with each other, jails are deemed one of the highest-risk facilities for a deadly outbreak, alongside shelters and nursing homes.

The county jail system has three facilities — two larger facilities in Martinez and Richmond, and a third small jail in Clayton that is reserved for a handful of low-level detainees without disciplinary problems. The jails are equipped with small cell pods for medical quarantines, but if there is a COVID-19 outbreak, it is possible an entire module could be quarantined, Tzvieli said.

As an extra precaution, jail staff have isolated inmates deemed to be at a greater health risk, and taken steps to reduce the number of inmates allowed on outdoor free time at once. Livingston said that he personally authorized early releases for 39 inmates who were serving sentences, and dozens more people have been freed through so-called “stipulated releases,” where prosecutors and defense attorneys agree to a pretrial release.

Tzvieli said he was “seriously impressed” with the county justice system’s response to the virus so far. The one positive test — a deputy at the West Contra Costa Detention Facility who was tested in late March — has not resulted in an outbreak at the jail.

But health officials are still expecting the virus to make its way into Contra Costa jails, as has happened in other parts of the Bay Area. In Alameda County, more than a dozen inmates and staffers at Santa Rita jail in Dublin have tested positive for COVID-19. San Francisco’s county jail system had its first confirmed case on Thursday.

“With that many people together I think it is likely we will have future cases,” Tzvieli said. “It’s sort of a, ‘Not if, but when.’ I’m hoping that we’ve prepared our response to handle it when it comes.”

More than 700 people remain incarcerated in Contra Costa’s jail system. Of those, more than 400 are awaiting trial (or transfer to state prison) on serious violent charges, like murder or manslaughter, child molestation, or felony assault, and are unlikely to be released, Livingston told the board.

At the start of the COVID-19 shutdown, Livingston issued a countywide memo to law enforcement agencies against booking people for, “felony on-view crimes and warrants, domestic violence-related misdemeanors, and restraining order violations.” On top of that, California’s chief justice lowered bail statewide to $0 for relatively low-level arrests including most non-violent penal code violations, which Livingston said he opposed.

“I think state has gone too far,” he told the board.

This has resulted in controversial booking decisions.

Last week, a 23-year-old man arrested for allegedly leading police on a dangerous chase in a stolen truck through San Ramon was cited and released rather than booked, police said. In Brentwood, a man who allegedly brandished a machete while trespassing at a residence wasn’t booked into jail, but police there later clarified that’s because they didn’t know about the machete until after his arrest, when he was booked simply on misdemeanor vandalism charges.

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Police: 2 dead, 14 wounded at party in Rochester, New York But authorities are cautioning people from assuming that the sharp decrease in bookings means that crimes committed during the COVID-19 shutdown will simply be forgotten. The Contra Costa District Attorney’s office is still filing criminal cases during the shutdown, and the jail population is expected to increase after stay-at-home orders are lifted.

“Our Office continues to file serious and violent felonies as well as certain misdemeanors, such as domestic violence offenses,” Scott Alonso, a spokesman for the District Attorney’s office, said in an email. “We have filed over 70 cases since the Court allowed us to do so. We will continue to balance public safety concerns along working with our partners to lower the jail population given the COVID-19 crisis.”