Virus update: What a difference a year makes
April should look very different from the past 12months as California stands poised to reopen for business.
SACRAMENTO >> This April should look very different than the last for California’s nearly 40 million residents, with a new plan from the governor that will speed up reopening a year after he imposed the nation’s first statewide coronavirus shutdown.
Next month, nearly the entire state could see a return of inside restaurant dining, the reopening of movie theaters and other indoor businesses, far more children back in classrooms and competing in sports — maybe even fans in the stands for Opening Day of Major League Baseball.
“It’s important that we start getting back to work and recovery,” said Emilie Clarke, district affairs and development director at the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, which represents businesses in California’s capital city.
Sacramento County has been stuck in the state’s most restrictive reopening tier, keeping restaurants, gyms and museums closed for indoor service alongside other business restrictions. California uses a four-tiered color-coded system to dictate how businesses and schools must operate; purple is the most restrictive, yellow the least.
A new plan
The quicker pace of reopening is tied to a new plan to vaccinate California’s most vulnerable residents. Once 2 million people across 400 ZIP codes in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods receive at least one vaccine dose, it will be easier for counties to exit the state’s most restrictive tier.
That threshold could be reached within two weeks. Once 4 million people in those neighborhoods are vaccinated, counties will be able to open up even more.
It all puts California in a drastically different position than a year ago, when Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed the statewide stay-at-home order that restricted travel, shuttered businesses and forced millions of people onto unemployment. California still has among the most severe restrictions
of any state and continues to discourage out-ofstate visitors.
Even as Newsom outlined the new policies Thursday, he struck a more cautious than optimistic tone, urging Californians to start wearing two masks.
“We can’t reopen our economy until we get this pandemic safely behind us,” the Democratic governor said from a vaccination site in Stockton.
Drastic improvement
Still, California’s coronavirus situation has improved with dizzying speed. The rate of people testing positive for the infection has fallen to 2.1% in the last week, the lowest level of the pandemic.
Hospitalizations that topped out at nearly 22,000 in early January are down to 4,500 now and projected to fall below 500 statewide by early April, according to state models. Similarly, models predict just 125 ICU
patients in a month’s time.
The models show deaths, which lag other indicators, continuing to flatten, but still another 4,800 people are projected to lose their lives by month’s end. More than 53,000 people have already died, the largest total in the country.
By focusing 40% of the state’s vaccine supply on the most vulnerable neighborhoods, state officials are hoping to further limit hospitalizations and deaths and allow the state to slowly move back toward a less restricted economy.
The new metrics will make it easier for major Southern California counties like Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego to loosen restrictions. San Francisco and several other Bay Area counties already are in the less restrictive “red tier” where some businesses can reopen for indoor services.
Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at
the University of California, San Francisco, called Newsom’s move smart and said the state had little justification in the first place to restrict outdoor activities.
In December, Newsom imposed a new stay-athome order that shuttered even outdoor dining for several weeks in the midst of the state’s worst surge, and he only approved the resumption of most outdoor youth and recreational sports last month.
“We have to open the economy — the collateral damage from lockdowns is staggering,” Gandhi said. “You can argue that California never should have restricted anything outside during these times when they were closing down parks and grounds and all that.”
Newsom has paid a political price for his handling of the virus. His popularity has fallen recently and a recall effort is nearing the mark needed to give voters a chance to fire him later this year.
In the past, Newsom has faced criticism for failing to tell lawmakers and business groups about his reopening and closure plans before announcing them. But this time he moved quickly to show widespread backing for the latest changes, sharing supportive statements from the California Medical Association, California Restaurant Association, California State Association of Counties and the legislative Latino and Black caucuses, among other groups.