Many parts of California could soon face deeper restrictions under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s latest plan to control the coronavirus outbreak surging throughout the state.
On Thursday, Newsom announced a new, regional stay-at-home order, which will force additional restrictions in any of the five regions of the state where fewer than 15% of intensive care units remain available. None of the regions — defined as Northern California, the Bay Area, Greater Sacramento, the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California — currently meet the threshold but some could “in the next day or two,” Newsom said.
“The bottom line is, if we don’t act now, our hospital system will be overwhelmed,” Newsom said at a virtual news conference Thursday afternoon. “And if we don’t act now, the death rate will continue to climb and we’ll see more lives lost. That’s why today, we are … pulling that emergency brake … in a much more broad and comprehensive way.”
Once a region’s ICU capacity falls below 15%, a rash of new restrictions will take effect 48 hours later. The new order resembles California’s initial shelter-in-place order from the spring but with some modifications.
Schools that are already open will be allowed to remain open, and retail will be allowed to remain open at 20% capacity. Sports and other entertainment will be allowed to continue, though without any live audiences. Restaurants will be restricted to takeout only, and places of worship will be forced outdoors. Hotels and offices can remain open only for “critical infrastructure” employees.
Forced to close entirely: all personal care services, including barbershops and nail salons; playgrounds inside and outside; bars, breweries and wineries; and all entertainment centers, including amusement parks, movie theaters, card rooms and casinos.
Under the new order, travel is prohibited “except as necessary for permitted activities,” but state officials encouraged residents to continue participating in safer outdoor activities.
Once the order takes effect, it will remain in place for at least three weeks. At that time, individual counties would be reassigned tiers within the reopening blueprint if the region’s capacity is projected to be above 15%. If the region is still below that threshold, the order would remain in effect and be reassessed on a weekly basis.
In the state’s projections, every region but the Bay Area will reach that threshold within the next week. The Bay Area “may have a few extra days,” Newsom said, and is projected to reach 15% capacity by mid- to late-December.
Facing dire circumstances, state leaders pleaded for residents to stay home or shift activities outside.
“Today’s message is not about how we mix safely, it’s how we reduce our mixing altogether,” said Dr. Mark Ghaly, the director of Health and Human Services.
“The bottom line is we want to mitigate mixing,” Newsom added. “Period. Full stop. … We need to create less opportunities for the kind of contact and extended time of contact that occurs in many of these establishments.”
More people fall under the Southern California region than the other four combined: more than 23 million between San Luis Obispo and the Mexican border.
The Bay Area region includes about 8.5 million people in the nine counties that traditionally make up the region, plus Santa Cruz and Monterey.
The San Joaquin Valley region includes about 4.5 million people from Calaveras to Kern counties, while the Greater Sacramento region covers about 3 million people from Butte to Alpine counties.
The fewest number of people fall in the Northern California region, which encompasses fewer than 1 million people from the Oregon border as far south as Mendocino County.
Under California’s current reopening guidelines, 99% of the state’s population already falls under the most restrictive purple tier, which has already forced many of the businesses that reopened over the summer and fall to close again.
In those places, it’s not just case rates but the capacity in local hospitals and intensive care units that state health officials are monitoring in “real time,” Newsom said.
Ghaly, the state’s top health official, said on Monday that ICU capacity was “what we worry about at this time specifically.”
“Because when that capacity goes away,” Ghaly said, “… we know the quality of care sometimes takes a dip and we see outcomes we don’t want to see.”
COVID-positive patients currently occupy about 25% of all the ICU beds in the state, while about 23% remain open, though some hospitals are verging on capacity. By mid-December, all of California’s ICUs could be full if no action is taken, according to state projections.
On Tuesday, the number of Californians in ICUs climbed over 2,000 for the first time since the height of the summer surge, with about 1,800 beds still available, according to the California Department of Public Health. That same day, the total number of Californians hospitalized with the virus grew to over 8,500, nearly 20% higher than the peak during the summer surge.
California is averaging nearly 15,000 new cases per day, more than any other point of the pandemic. Its positivity rate, which was 5.3% two weeks ago and as low as 3% at the start of November, has reached 7.3%.
About 12% of all cases result in hospitalization, according to state health officials, and about 30% of cases that reach hospitalization eventually end up in the ICU or on a ventilator.
In Santa Clara County, nearly nine in 10 hospital beds are full, and no hospital in the county has more than five open ICU beds, officials said Wednesday. In San Mateo County, about 83% hospital beds are occupied, while in Alameda County, about 39% remain open.
On Monday, Newsom said about 59% of all hospital beds in California were occupied but that number was projected to grow to 78% by Christmas. In the Bay Area about 58% of hospital beds were full Monday and projected to fill to 62% by Christmas, Newsom said.
Check back for updates.
