Under heavy pressure from industry and tourism groups, and facing a growing recall movement, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has not renewed the state's stay-at-home COVID orders even as new strains of the virus are now ravaging the state.
California officials lifted regional coronavirus stay-at-home orders across the state on Monday, a change that could allow restaurants and businesses in many counties to reopen outdoor dining and other services.
All counties will return to the colored tier system that assigns local risk levels based on case numbers and rates of positive test results for coronavirus infections.
Most counties will be classified under the “widespread” risk tier, which permits hair salons to offer limited services indoors but restricts many other nonessential indoor business operations.
The change, which takes effect immediately, could lessen restrictions in in the Southern California, Bay Area and San Joaquin Valley regions, which were still under stay-at-home orders, unless local officials adopt stronger restrictions. Throughout the pandemic, local leaders have been allowed to go beyond the state’s rules, approve their own stay-at-home orders or shut down additional activities they deem too risky for their areas.
“California is slowly starting to emerge from the most dangerous surge of this pandemic yet, which is the light at the end of the tunnel we’ve been hoping for,” said California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly. “Seven weeks ago, our hospitals and frontline medical workers were stretched to their limits, but Californians heard the urgent message to stay home when possible and our surge after the December holidays did not overwhelm the healthcare system to the degree we had feared.”
It’s far from clear whether the decision will lead to easing stay-at-home rules in Los Angeles County, which has become a national hotbed of the coronavirus, with hospitals overwhelmed by patients. In less than one month, more than 5,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the county alone.
Still, the outdoor dining ban has been highly controversial, with some elected officials and the restaurant industry fighting in and out of court to overturn it. Officials in some other Southern California counties have been even more critical of the state-imposed rules, and had urged Newsom to give them more local control.
The governor announced the regional stay-at-home orders on Dec. 3 in an effort to reduce the strain on hospitals as case numbers surged. Although state data show hospital systems in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley remain strained, the Newsom administration said models project ICU capacity in those regions and the Bay Area will exceed 15% — a threshold for lifting the regional shutdowns — over the next four weeks.
By delaying his final decision until late last night, Newsom gets to punt everything over to California local and county governments as far as remaining operational, and he can claim victory for keeping hospitals from being overwhelmed.
Except he can't really do that as hospitals are continuing to be overwhelmed, especially in Los Angeles County, home to some nine million Americans.
Newsom is betting county officials will be able to handle things, which they weren't in December.
It's going to be bad in California for a long time, folks. And this time, we can't put the blame entirely on Trump.
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