Surges clip Californians’ wings

10m in Los Angeles asked to stay home and San Francisco put under curfew

Los Angeles County is telling its 10 million residents to stay home “as much as possible’’, and San Francisco is imposing a nightly curfew on its 900,000 people as coronavirus cases surge in the California cities.

The moves come as the number of infections in the United States hits more than 13.3 million.

In California, daily case numbers have set records in recent days. Admissions to hospitals statewide have increased more than 80 percent over the past two weeks.

San Francisco’s curfew was expected to come in on Monday night, along with other restrictions, the city announced.

The curfew requires nonessential businesses to close and prohibits members of different households from gathering between 10 pm and 5 am until Dec 21, Mayor London Breed said on Saturday.

As of early Monday, 13,385,495 people in the US had contracted the coronavirus, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

The number of coronavirus cases in the US recorded for November by Saturday had surpassed 4 million — more than double the then- record of 1.9 million cases in October. Fortyfour states have set weekly case records, and 25 states have set weekly death records in November.

While Los Angeles and San Francisco are imposing new restrictions, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Sunday that public schools will begin to reopen on Dec 7 for pupils in elementary grades whose parents agree to a weekly testing regimen for the novel coronavirus.

Students can return only if they have already signed up for in- person learning, meaning fewer than 335,000 of the city’s schoolchildren — or roughly a third — are eligible.

The mayor closed the school system, the largest in the country with 1.1 million children, on Nov 19 after the city overall exceeded a threshold of a 3 percent positivity rate in coronavirus testing. The level had been agreed upon with a teachers’ union as part of the original school- reopening plan.

De Blasio said on Sunday that while the city’s latest rolling average is 3.9 percent, he is partly reopening schools because “we have so much proof now how safe schools can be”.

Stringent testing needed

The president of the United Federation of Teachers said in a statement that the labor union supported the phased reopening so long as “stringent testing was in place”.

“I think that’s the right direction,” Governor Andrew Cuomo said of the mayor’s announcement. Health experts say schools “should be kept open whenever it’s possible to keep them open safely”, he said.

Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, announced the new restrictions on Friday that were to take effect on Monday and run through Dec 20.

The public health department order came as the county confirmed 24 new deaths and 4,544 new cases from the day before.

The order bans people from gathering with others who aren’t in their households — whether publicly or privately — except for church services and protests, the public health department said in a statement. The restrictions stop short of a full shutdown of retail stores and other nonessential businesses. It advises residents to stay home “as much as possible” and to wear a face covering when they go out.

On Tuesday, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a group established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was expected to meet to vote on how a coronavirus vaccine will be given out when one has been approved.