The league announced the Bay Area as the host site for next season’s All-Star weekend at a Monday press conference in San Francisco featuring commissioner Adam Silver, San Francisco mayor London Breed and Warriors owner Joe Lacob.

“This will be the epicenter for basketball around the world,” Silver said of the All-Star festivities scheduled for Feb. 14-16, 2025. “Our fans from everywhere love coming to this market. They love the excitement here. So much innovation around this game has come from people who live and work in the Bay Area.”

This will be the third time the Warriors have hosted the All-Star Game. The first time played out well for Warriors fans: In 1967, the Cow Palace hosted the game and Warriors star Rick Barry was named the Most Valuable Player with a 38-point performance as the West won.

The last time the game was played in the Bay Area was 2000, when the Warriors were mired in a dark stretch. They didn’t have a player in the game, and team owner Chris Cohan was booed off the floor.

The Warriors are a far cry from the dregs of that weekend in 2000, which did feature a mesmerizing dunk contest win by Vince Carter of the Raptors. They have had 22 All-Star Game appearances over the last decade, including nine for Stephen Curry, the MVP of the 2022 game in which he scored 50 points.

Lacob said he is hopeful Curry will be selected to play in the showcase game at home.

“He gets to play for the first time in front of his home fans,” he said. “That would be one of my great wishes.”

All-Star weekend has traditionally begun Friday night with the Rising Stars game, then Saturday features the dunk and 3-point contests, as well as a skills challenge, and the game itself is played on Sunday.

Oakland will also play a role in the proceedings, as it will host the All-Star celebrity game on Friday, as well as a Saturday practice and showcase games for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and the G League.

“When we started talking about NBA All-Star, it was important for us to have events on both sides of the bay,” Warriors team president and COO Brandon Schneider said.

After having players draft their own teams for the last half-decade, the league plans to return to an East-vs.-West format for the game this season, and Silver said more changes could be coming.

“We’re looking at all different approaches to All-Star and this is a great market to try new things,” he said, imploring fans to “stay tuned.”

Breed said she expects the city to see an economic boost from hosting the event.

“It’s not just about the economy but the excitement,” she said, citing expectations for 135,000 people to participate in events across the three-day weekend.

The weekend will kick off a significant 18-month period for the Bay Area, as Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara will host the Super Bowl in February 2026 as well as at least one game in the FIFA World Cup later that summer.

LIVE: NBA All-Star 2025 Announcement https://t.co/4XlQ1a9BQq

— NBA (@NBA) November 6, 2023

“It’s possible that a relocation vote could happen as early as June,” Manfred said at Milwaukee’s American Family Field before the Brewers’ game against the Giants. “It’s really now a question of getting a finalized financing package that would allow them to build on that site. It’s very difficult to have a timeline for Oakland until there’s actually a deal to be considered.”

The owners will meet from June 13-15 in New York, and while there remain steps to be taken, Manfred said he was “optimistic” about the A’s finalizing a public-financing deal with Nevada lawmakers that would pave the way for the move. On Wednesday, Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo announced a tentative agreement with the club, however it must still be approved by state legislators, whose session ends June 5 and won’t reconvene until 2025.

Getting MLB owners to vote on relocation in three weeks marks a significant change in timeline in the A’s potential path out of Oakland. A month ago, A’s team president David Kaval told LVSportsBiz.com he hoped to apply to MLB as early as August, but that was at least two stadium plans ago. The A’s need approval from 75 percent of the league, or 23 yes votes.

The A’s have come to agreements on multiple potential sites for a new stadium in the past month, first on a 49-acre parcel north of the Raiders’ new home and, this week, one on the strip, on the Tropicana Las Vegas property. Per Casey Pratt of ABC7, team officials toured a third site even after announcing the binding agreement with Bally’s Corporation, the owner of the Tropicana.

Manfred said the A’s were “pretty settled” on the Tropicana site, but the relocation vote was still contingent on the approval of the public financing and the A’s completing the required steps in MLB’s internal relocation process, which includes studies on fan interest, possible corporate sponsorships and more, which the commissioner said A’s owner John Fisher “(has) not even started.”

Under the latest collective bargaining agreement, if the A’s don’t have “a binding deal” for a ballpark in place by January 15, 2024, they will no longer be eligible for revenue-sharing funds. They are receiving $20 million this season.

The other MLB owners would eventually get a vote in the A’s relocation; the last team to move, the Montreal Expos received the approval of all but one owner, the Orioles’ Peter Angelos, who would become neighbors with the now-Washington Nationals.

Manfred said he was in Milwaukee “as part of an ongoing process to meet with players” and that he met with representatives from the Giants and Brewers (though in the words of one San Francisco player who has spoken with him in the past but didn’t participate Wednesday, “nothing productive ever comes of it”).

Ostensibly, however, Manfred’s presence regarded the nearly half-a-billion dollars in maintenance costs the league said this week is required of American Family Field, which has been home to the Brewers since it opened in 2001. While addressing the resistance to pouring more public money into the 22-year-old facility, the commissioner struck a notably different tone than with the A’s.

Manfred said “there is not a scenario in my mind at the current moment” that the Brewers could leave Milwaukee while calling the situation here “the antithesis of what has happened in Oakland, and I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure it stays that way.”

Of the Coliseum, which was built in 1966 and has been the A’s home since 1968, Manfred said, “unfortunately, it’s a facility that was never as good as this one when it started. They made some unfortunate decisions not to maintain the ballpark in the way that it needed to be maintained. It resulted in a decline in the attendance, which had an impact on the quality of product the team could afford to put on the field.”

As for the A’s future in the East Bay?

“Well,” Manfred said, “I think you’d have to ask the mayor of Oakland (Sheng Thao) … You know, I don’t have a crystal ball as to where anything’s going. There’s not a definitive deal done in Las Vegas, and we’ll have to see how that plays out.”

Thao told reporters the city and the team had been “in mid-negotiations — the closest we’ve ever been to landing a deal,” when Kaval called last month to tell her the A’s had an agreement to purchase land in Las Vegas.

Thao announced that negotiations for the waterfront development were dead a day later, but also told NBC Bay Area’s Raj Mathai she’d listen if the A’s wanted to resume talks to keep the team in the East Bay.

“I really hope that they have a change of heart and really, truly feel that they do,” Thao told Mathai. “If they would call me, I would pick up because it’s not about me, it’s not about (owner) John Fisher, it’s really about the bigger, more complex issues around the fan base, what it means to drive the economy here in the city of Oakland.

“And what means to really be rooted here in Oakland. And so I really hope we can set aside our differences and work something out, but at the same time, if it doesn’t work out, I’m excited for all the opportunities that could be at Howard Terminal.”

“What the actual (expletive),” one user wrote on Twitter, while sharing a photo that showed an array of Dodgers gear for sale at a booth on the Oracle Park concourse. “This is INSIDE Oracle Park.”

A Giants spokesperson said on Sunday that it was a result of a mix-up with a third-party vendor and that the organization has assured rival merchandise will not be sold again inside Oracle Park.

The vendor, Sevynn’s Negro League Apparel, is a subcontractor of the Giants’ concessionaire, Bon Appetit, according to Giants senior vice president of public affairs and community relations Shana Daum. While the stand is “very popular” and typically sells vintage apparel, Daum said, on Saturday it was pictured with various Dodger-branded merchandise.

At least four sweatshirts bearing the Los Angeles logo were for sale between $40 and $100, while a dozen different varieties of caps with logos ranging from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, as well as the San Francisco Seals, were available.

“We’ve spoken to Bon Appetit and have been reassured that selling Dodgers merchandise will not happen again in the future,” Daum said in a text message.

The Giants are 4-14 this season against the Dodgers and, entering Sunday, had lost their last six meetings at Oracle Park.

“There’s a light at the end of the tunnel,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a news conference Wednesday in Riverside County.

The shift has been dramatic in recent weeks as the holiday surge in cases has abated. California’s statewide number of new COVID-19 cases has fallen a dramatic 90% — from 42,655 a month ago on Jan. 14 to 4,090 on Wednesday, Newsom noted. The number of people hospitalized has been reduced 38% over the past two weeks, and the number of ICU patients has dropped 33%.

“We are in a very different place than we have been because of all of your hard work — each and every one of you doing your part,” Newsom said, speaking at a vaccine clinic for farmworkers at Sea View packing company in Coachella.

The optimism came on a day state officials announced a new deal to provide relief payments and grants for millions of Californians and businesses hit hard by the pandemic.

Meanwhile, only 3.3% of all tests are coming back positive for COVID-19, after California’s positivity rate had climbed above 14% last month.

The steady downward trend could be reversed if new strains of coronavirus from South Africa, the United Kingdom and other areas spread in California.

But for now, the downward trend, and increasing number of vaccines, is moving several Bay Area counties closer to the red tier, which allows businesses to more broadly open, from the purple tier, where all nine Bay Area counties currently sit.

Six sparsely populated counties in California have already moved to the red or orange tiers in recent weeks based on lowered case numbers — Del Norte, Trinity, Plumas, Sierra, Alpine and Mariposa. Seven counties in and around the Bay Area are close to advancing, led by San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo counties, with Santa Clara, Alameda, Sonoma and nearby Santa Cruz counties not far behind.

State health officials release updated tier information every Tuesday.

When counties fall into the red tier, restaurants are allowed to reopen for indoor — not just outdoor — service at 25% capacity or 100 people, whichever is fewer. Also, movie theaters, zoos, aquariums and museums can re-open at 25% capacity. Gyms can reopen indoors at 10% capacity. And retail stores can increase their capacity from 10% to 25%.

The red tier also allows for more competitive youth sports to be played, including baseball and softball games. However, counties can set their own stricter rules to slow reopening, which a few counties, including Santa Clara County, have done in the past.

How close are Bay Area counties to reaching that mark?

The adjusted case rate in San Francisco and Marin County fell to 8.9 per 100,000 residents, according to the state’s metrics released Tuesday, which give credit for high rates of testing in addition to measuring the per-capita infection rate. In San Mateo County, it sank to 9.6 per 100,000.

For a county to exit purple and enter the red tier, its adjusted case rate must fall below 7 per 100,000, and its weekly positivity rate cannot be higher than 8%. Every county in the Bay Area already meets the red tier’s positivity rate threshold.

Here’s an overview of the most recent numbers released by CDPH (adjusted case rate, positivity rate):

• Alameda: 12.6, 3.6%
• Contra Costa: 16.4, 4.6%
• Marin: 8.9, 2.4%
• Napa: 14.2, 4.6%
• San Francisco: 8.9, 2.6%
• San Mateo: 9.6, 2.8%
• Santa Clara: 10.9, 3.2%
• Santa Cruz: 12.2, 3.5%
• Solano: 18.4, 5.3%
• Sonoma: 13.8, 4.0%

On Tuesday at an event in Los Angeles, Newsom predicted that “a substantial” number of counties in California will move into the red tier next week and the following week.

The availability of vaccines in California is improving but continues to be a significant issue. As of Wednesday, California has administered 6.3 million doses — more than any other state and sixth highest in the world –– behind the United States, China, the European Union, the United Kingdom, India and Israel. But California has 40 million people, 30 million of them who need to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity.

The state received 1.08 million doses from the federal government last week. This week, it will receive 1.23 million. Next week it expects 1.32 million, Newsom said.

“That’s good. That’s important progress,” Newsom said. He added: “But clearly on the basis of what we are administering on a daily basis, it’s not enough. We run through that supply in less than a week. And that’s the constraint.”

As has been the case for the past year, Northern California continues to have lower COVID-19 case rates than Southern California.

Counties in the Bay Area region make up three of the top 10 lowest case rates in California and six of the 14 lowest rates in the state.

Inyo County along the Nevada border remains the furthest from exiting the purple tier, with an adjusted case rate of 41 per 100,000. It is followed by Kings, Stanislaus, Glenn, Riverside, Santa Barbara, Kern, Merced and Sutter counties, all with adjusted case rates above 25 per 100,000.

The next update to the tiers is due Tuesday, Feb. 23.

If San Francisco or San Mateo were to advance, it would be their first time outside of the purple tier since Nov. 28. Marin County entered the most restrictive tier a week later. When Santa Clara and a number of other Bay Area counties eventually exit purple, it will be their first time in a less restrictive tier since Nov. 16.

A total of seven counties have not moved from the purple tier since the state implemented the reopening system at the end of August: Sonoma and Monterey in or around the Bay Area; Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Imperial in Southern California; and Madera and Tulare counties in the San Joaquin Valley.

An abnormally high number of people experienced anaphylactic shock, a severe allergic reaction that requires immediate medical attention, after receiving a shot of the Moderna vaccine at one San Diego vaccination site, Dr. Erica Pan said in statement Sunday night. While the number was fewer than 10, the cluster of negative reactions prompted the California Department of Public Health to recommend pausing the administration of some 330,000 doses from the batch, which had been distributed throughout the state, until an investigation was complete.

Santa Clara County had received 21,800 shots from the batch, which was identified as Lot 41L20A, and shortly after the state issued its recommendation, the county responded by instructing local providers to also halt usage of its allotment from that batch. None of the doses had yet to be administered within the county, officials said. Additionally, they said, there has been no evidence of increased incidents of adverse reactions in Santa Clara County. In Alameda County, health officials said some local providers had received doses from the batch but that there also had been no unusual responses to the vaccine reported to county health.

“Our goal is to provide the COVID vaccine safely, swiftly and equitably,” Pan said in the statement. “A higher-than-usual number of possible allergic reactions were reported with a specific lot of Moderna vaccine administered at one community vaccination clinic. … Out of an extreme abundance of caution and also recognizing the extremely limited supply of vaccine, we are recommending that providers use other available vaccine inventory and pause the administration of vaccines from Moderna Lot 041L20A until the investigation by the CDC, FDA, Moderna and the state is complete. We will provide an update as we learn more.”

The 330,000 doses in the batch from Moderna amount to just below 10% of all the vaccine doses allocated to California thus far. But of the 3.5 million doses the state has received, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it has administered fewer than one-third of those, just over 1 million doses. On a per-capita basis, only five states have delivered fewer shots into arms than California, according to the CDC data.

In Santa Clara County, the providers who received vaccine doses from the potentially problematic batch include Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, Stanford Health Care and El Camino Health. County health officials said they are working closely with the state and federal agencies and will provide updates when more information is available.

The county has outpaced the state in administration of its vaccinations. Of the approximately 153,000 doses it has received, two-thirds have made their way into residents’ arms, according to the county’s vaccine dashboard. But the county will now shelve about 14% of the doses it has received thus far — an even larger share of those that haven’t yet been administered — because of the adverse effects at the single Southern California clinic.

The reactions reported at the San Diego clinic were similar to rare occurrences that the CDC had warned of and cautioned to be on the lookout for. In California, vaccination sites have staff who monitor recipients on-site for 15 minutes after receiving the shot for adverse reactions. The cluster in Southern California was the first in the nation concerning enough to pause usage altogether.

According to KGTV in San Diego, six recipients of the vaccine at a vaccination “super station” experienced adverse reactions last week, which officials also described as an abnormally high amount, prompting the site to switch to another batch of vaccines.

Severe allergic reactions, while possible, are believed to be exceedingly rare in the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. The rate of anaphylaxis in the Moderna vaccine was expected to be about one in every 100,000, officials said. Of 1.9 million first doses of the Pfizer vaccine studied by the CDC, there were only 21 cases of anaphylaxis observed, in a report published earlier this month.

Multiple federal and state agencies had opened an investigation into the cases and said they would have more information later this week.

The reproductive rate in the city has been slashed by almost a quarter since the first week of December, Dr. Grant Colfax, the city’s public health director, said Tuesday in a virtual news conference. Average daily infections have fallen by the same amount just in the past week, according to this news organization’s analysis, and, on a per-capita basis, San Francisco is averaging fewer new cases than all but one other county in the Bay Area.

Ahead of the holiday, Colfax praised San Franciscans but urged them to practice caution. There is always New Year’s 2022, he said.

“Hundreds of families in San Francisco will have a chance to spend next New Year’s Eve together in good health because of the choices we make this week,” Colfax said. “As we head into New Year’s Eve, let’s remember the power is in our hands to continue to turn this surge around.”

In San Francisco, early action has made an impact, according to Colfax. On Dec. 5, the day before the city voluntarily implemented a stay-at-home order, the average sick person in San Francisco was infecting 1.45 others with the virus. By Dec. 26, three weeks later, the reproductive rate had been slashed to 1.13. In order to contain and suppress the virus, Colfax hopes to ring in the new year with a reproductive rate below 1.

Under the worst-case scenario in city models, where the reproductive rate stayed at 1.45, hospitals in the city would have been overrun with nearly 1,500 COVID-19 patients at a projected February peak, and more than 500 additional lives could have been lost by the beginning of March. At its current rate, hospitalizations are also projected to peak in mid-February but at close to 300 patients. If the reproductive rate in San Francisco falls below 1 by Jan. 1, it would result in hospitalizations peaking shortly thereafter and hundreds of lives saved, Colfax said.

However, the city is walking a tightrope. An additional wave of infections from holiday celebrations would be “catastrophic,” Colfax said.

San Francisco’s counterparts across California have not fared as well. The state as a whole is leading the nation in per-capita infections over the past week, and hospitals are overrun in all of Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley.

To avoid that future, Colfax urged San Franciscans to keep up their resilience. Still, with the number of travelers over the holiday weekend at its highest since the onset of the pandemic, Colfax called what that could mean for the coming weeks “extremely concerning.”

The earliest the impact of Christmas celebrations may begin to show up in the data will be Jan. 2, Colfax said, and New Year’s Eve six days after that.

Despite the explosive spread elsewhere in the state, Colfax said there has been no evidence that the more virulent strain of COVID-19 from the United Kingdom had found its ways to California’s shores. Labs, including those at UC San Francisco, are sequencing test samples as they are taken, “so we would expect if and when this variant enters the country, the state or the region that it would eventually be detected,” Colfax said, though he stipulated “it is very likely it could be here and not yet detected.”

On Thursday, San Francisco officials ordered all incoming travelers from outside the Bay Area to quarantine for 10 days and discouraged any nonessential travel within the region. The impetus for the order, health director Dr. Grant Colfax said, was to avoid a potentially “catastrophic situation” where its hospitals are overrun in a similar fashion to others around the country.

“While we in San Francisco are in a grave situation, other places are unfortunately even worse off,” Colfax said Thursday during a virtual news conference. “This means people who travel outside of San Francisco and visitors from other areas are at much higher risk of being infected and spreading the virus. … As we head into this holiday season and with cases still accelerating at a staggering rate, we want to take every step possible to slow the spread.”

In San Francisco, the per-capita infection rate is still lower than 47 of the 50 states, even as California has ascended to fifth on that leaderboard. At about 30 daily infections for every 100,000 residents in the past week, the infection rate in San Francisco is also about one-third that of the state and lower than all of its Bay Area neighbors besides Marin County. But transmission continues to rise nonetheless, if slightly slower than the immediate post-Thanksgiving surge. Cases have increased 27% just in the past week, Colfax said.

“We could be at a key inflection point,” Colfax said. “An increase over this next holiday period could put us over the edge into a truly catastrophic situation. We cannot afford a further increase in cases, especially an increase like we saw during Thanksgiving.”

Nearly a third of San Francisco’s intensive care units are still available, according to the city’s data, despite ICU capacity falling to 13.1% across the region. That is substantially more than in Santa Clara, San Mateo or Marin counties, where few beds remain available. Statewide, ICU capacity has dwindled to 3%, with almost no beds available in Southern California or the San Joaquin Valley.

However, San Francisco hospitals have accepted one transfer patient from within the Bay Area but have not taken on additional patients from outside the region, like they did during the spring and summer, Colfax said.

Hospitalizations won’t hit their peak until at least seven to 10 days after cases begin to decline, Colfax said. There are 150 patients currently hospitalized with COVID-19 in the city — its most of the pandemic — and that number is expected to exceed 200 “in the next couple weeks;” it could go even higher if the new restrictions don’t curb transmission.

“Given the continued rise in cases, we expect our ICU and acute care beds will continue to fill rapidly with sick patients,” Colfax said. But San Francisco can avoid the worst of the third wave if its residents renew their vigor for health protocols, he continued. “To make this reality, we must avoid a Christmas and New Year’s increase, and we need your help in doing that.”

Those entering the city from outside the region will be mandated to quarantine for 10 days, similar to a recent order in Santa Clara County, which also adopted the new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That includes returning residents, people moving to San Francisco, those who work in San Francisco and visitors, unless specifically exempted by the order.

Under the new order, Bay Area residents are still free to travel between its 10 counties without restriction, though officials have discouraged nonessential trips. A number of professions are also exempt from the order: medical professionals, first responders, official government business and essential infrastructure work, as is anybody passing through San Francisco for less than 24 hours.

Any violation of the mandatory quarantine qualifies as a misdemeanor offense. It takes effect at the stroke of midnight Friday and will remain in place through at least Jan. 4.

California’s initial jobless filings rose by 47,454 to 177,837, according to the Department of Labor’s weekly report, the state’s largest weekly increase in claims since the week of March 28. The bump effectively erased the previous week’s progress, when the fewest Californians filed for unemployment insurance since the pandemic began. In this past week, more Californians filed initial claims than anytime since September.

The U.S. economy hit a similar bump: Jobless claims increased by 137,000 to 853,000, on a seasonally adjusted basis, after claims had fallen by 71,000 the week before.

“Our fears of a significant economic toll taken by the explosion in the COVID-19 cases have now been matched by a spike in new claims for unemployment benefits,” said Mark Hamrick, a senior economic analyst for Bankrate. “As with last week’s report, it isn’t clear how much of this volatility might be linked to the Thanksgiving holiday, amounting to a game of catch-up. But the underlying story and trends, including the slowing number of jobs being added in the monthly employment data, are unsettling.”

While it’s possible the latest numbers reflect a post-Thanksgiving “catch-up” after a dip during the holiday week when offices were closed, economists are bearish on what the ongoing surge of infections and shutdowns could mean without government intervention.

California’s job market had been making steady gains since the initial lockdowns were lifted. In October, the Bay Area added its most jobs since June, but experts were wary of the months ahead.

Following the latest round of stay-at-home orders in California, issued last Thursday, economists had anticipated an increase in filings. But it’s more likely the surge followed the short Thanksgiving week, said Stephen Levy, a senior economist and the director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto.

The effects of the newest round of restrictions will be felt in the following weeks of unemployment filings, Levy said.

“We know that the next four or five months, at least, are going to be very difficult in California and in our region,” Levy said. “There will be more layoffs in the next few months because of the COVID restrictions and the spread of the virus. So the unemployment situation is not going to get better, really, until the vaccine becomes available.”

California saw a larger jump in new filers than any other state, followed by Illinois (+31,468), Texas (+19,871) and Pennsylvania (+16,366).

“Not surprisingly, claims jumped in California, Illinois, Texas and Pennsylvania, states that have been hit especially hard by the third wave of the pandemic,” said Andrew Stettner, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation.

Levy, the Palo Alto-based economist, believes California will continue to report higher unemployment numbers than the rest of the nation for two reasons.

“One, we have really much more severe activity restrictions than most other places, which will dampen employment in restaurants and retail and tourist activities,” Levy said. “Second, we’re having this enormous surge, even with the activities restrictions, so I don’t see them being removed anytime soon.”

First of all, the app — dubbed CA Notify — goes live Thursday. It was created in partnership with Apple and Google, and it allows users of those smartphones who opt in to receive notifications if they have been in close proximity with another user of the app who has tested positive. The more people who sign up, the more effective the app is. Other states that have rolled out similar programs have had difficulty convincing large swaths of the population to opt in.

[ Read more about how the app works and its implementation in California here. ]

But you want to know how to sign up.

For iPhone users, you’re in luck. All it takes is a couple taps in your settings. For Android users, you’ll have to hold your horses until Thursday: that’s when the app will be available to download from the Google Play store.

Although the California-specific technology goes live later this week, exposure notifications came preloaded in iOS 13.7 and are accessible through your iPhone’s settings. Apple users can already opt in to the app by going into “Settings,” scrolling down and tapping on “Exposure Notifications.” From there, select “Turn On Exposure Notifications,” choose “United States” then “California” as your location, and agree to the terms and conditions. A pop-up will appear requesting to turn on exposure notifications; tap “Turn On.”

That’s it — you’re in.

Until it goes live Thursday, though, only those participating in the pilot programs on college campuses are able to share their COVID-19 diagnosis.

Beginning Thursday, when CA Notify launches in the Google Play store, Android users will be able to download the app, open it and turn on exposure notifications.

As Gov. Gavin Newsom said, “a very simple process.”

Newsom laid out the strictest widespread shutdown the state has seen since its initial shelter-in-place orders in March, requiring regions to close outdoor restaurant, brewery and winery seating, hair salons and barbershops, playgrounds and other venues if their hospital ICU capacity dips below 15%.

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The Bay Area “region”– which includes Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Monterey, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano and Sonoma counties — is expected to hit that trigger point by mid-to-late December, Newsom said. For the rest of the state, it likely will be within the next week.

“The bottom line is, if we don’t act now, our hospital system will be overwhelmed,” Newsom said. “If we don’t act now, we’ll continue to see (our) death rate climb. More lives lost.”

The new order comes as more Californians than ever before were hospitalized with COVID-19 this week, and average daily infections continue to rise — hitting a record of nearly 15,000 on Wednesday. About 23% of the state’s ICU beds remain open, but all could be full by mid-December if no action is taken, according to state projections. In Santa Clara County, nearly nine in 10 hospital beds are full, and no hospital has more than five open ICU beds, officials said Wednesday. If Alameda County hospitals continue to fill up, officials there might enact the new stay-at-home order even before required to.

Thursday’s restrictions differ from California’s earliest shelter-in-place orders. Even when a region hits the 15% ICU capacity threshold, retail stores — including shopping centers — can continue conducting business indoors at 20% capacity. Schools that have begun in-person classes will not be forced to stop and go back to distance learning only.

But the order bans all non-essential travel.

Newsom is taking the right steps to avoid the catastrophe that would ensue if California’s hospitals run out of room, said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, professor and chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF.

“I think this has the potential to really turn the corner,” she said.

But the new order is likely to hit many Bay Area businesses hard again — including restaurants, which have been forced to bounce back and forth between outdoor-only dining and indoor dining with restrictions. Now, if the Bay Area’s hospital capacity continues to drop, they’ll be forced to offer takeout and delivery only.

The constantly changing health rules have left Oyo restaurant in downtown Pleasanton in limbo. The owner, 60-year-old Maurice Dissels, had to lay off workers earlier this year and might again if the Bay Area is hit with another shutdown order.

“We have a mixed mindset,” he said Thursday, while standing outside his Guyanese and South American-style restaurant with his partner and son, Samuel. “On one hand, this is a family-owned business. I’d like to keep my family and my employees safe. But at the same time, we’re trying to make a living here. So I’m struggling.”

The restaurant is still putting the finishing touches on its new wooden parklet — built to accommodate the prior mandate that allowed just outdoor seating.

In addition to the financial strain on businesses, many in the Bay Area are feeling pandemic fatigue. After more than eight months of COVID-related restrictions, and with the temptation of social gatherings particularly strong during the holiday season, it’s unclear how willing people will be to follow Newsom’s new mandates. To further complicate matters, several politicians — including Newsom, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo and San Francisco Mayor London Breed — have faced criticism for attending gatherings despite urging their constituents to stay home.

As a result, Newsom got some immediate pushback after announcing the new order.

“The insanity of another lockdown and expecting a different result is madness,” California State Senator Melissa Melendez, R – Lake Elsinore, said in a statement. “To add insult to tremendous injury, the Governor and too many Democrat-elected officials don’t even follow their own mandates. Californians damn well deserve better.”

For counties that don’t enforce the new rules, Newsom threatened to withhold federal CARES Act dollars and other pandemic relief funding.

Carol Goedde, 78, was enjoying lunch at Maggiano’s Little Italy restaurant in San Jose’s Santana Row on Thursday afternoon when she heard about the governor’s new order. The San Jose resident said she has signed multiple “Recall Gavin Newsom” petitions since the beginning of the pandemic.

“He’s closing down California and making more people depressed,” Goedde said. “I just think that people should be making their own decisions, and it shouldn’t be the governor telling us how to live our lives.”

Pointing to the spaced-out tables and servers wearing masks, Goedde said she felt safe eating outdoors.

But Bibbins-Domingo said that with COVID cases up, she agrees with Newsom that outdoor dining is too risky. Many outdoor dining areas have become crowded, and others, as the weather gets colder, are putting up make-shift shelters that limit airflow and could increase virus spread, she said. And on top of that, diners take their masks off when eating — compounding the risk.

The new order comes two weeks after Newsom announced a limited, nearly statewide curfew designed to curtail the nighttime movements of Californians and slow the virus’ spread. Dr. Mark Ghaly, California’s Health and Human Services Secretary, on Thursday admitted the curfew hadn’t been as effective as desired — which was part of the reason state officials progressed to a more restrictive order. The curfew led to “slight reductions” in nighttime movement but “nothing too significant,” he said.

“We, of course, had hoped and wanted to see more from that already, but we haven’t,” Ghaly said.

More help is on the way, however. Newsom expects the state will receive 327,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines between Dec. 12 and 15.

“There is light at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “We do not anticipate having to do this once again. But we really all need to step up.”

Staff writer John Woolfolk contributed.