Los Angeles expands reopening; Newsom says state is prepared
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles County’s 10 million residents joined much of the rest of California in welcoming back restaurant dining and haircuts Friday, moves Gov. Gavin Newsom acknowledged would help fuel an increase in coronavirus cases that he said the state is now well positioned to handle.
While Los Angeles County eases into reopening despite recording more than half the statewide death toll from the pandemic, the governor praised sparsely populated Lassen County at the other end of the state for briefly toggling back its reopening while it tested, tracked and isolated those who may have been exposed during its first small outbreak.
“No one ... is naive about the reality of reopening our economy and the expectation that as more and more people mix and are not practicing physical distancing, are not wearing face coverings, that the likelihood that we see a larger spread of this disease presents itself,” Newsom said.
But he listed California’s gains in recent weeks in testing those who may have been infected, treating those with serious reactions in intensive care units newly equipped with thousands of respirators, tracing and isolating those infected, and in distributing masks and other protective gear.
“Our capacity ... has never been more robust to address those issues in real time,” Newsom said, adding that he is confident “we can keep a lid on the transmission of Covid-19.”
His comments came after some local health officials said the state may be moving too quickly, without assessing the effect of each phase with a twoweek incubation period.
But Newsom said the state’s increased readiness allows state officials to defer to local leaders to determine when it is prudent to gradually relax what once were statewide stay-at-home orders that shuttered the economy. Even San Francisco Bay Area counties, which had been moving in concert, are now diverging in how quickly they allow a resumption of shopping and other activities.
Newsom said the key to a manageable recovery remains local control in a state so vast that its borders would stretch from Vermont to Virginia and a population that eclipses the total in 21 other states combined. He noted that the rates of positive test results, hospitalizations and intensive care cases overall in California have been stable for several weeks.
Los Angeles County officials said in a statement that their county “has demonstrated that it has controlled the spread of the virus, and is protecting residents and essential workers.”
They said hair-cutting businesses can reopen and restaurants can resume dine-in service, but cautioned that if the rate of infection or other key metrics return to unsafe numbers, the county Department of Public Health could limit or close reopened sectors.
The number of cases in Los Angeles County rose above 51,000 on Friday, with the death toll at 2,290. Statewide, California has topped 106,000 confirmed cases and 4,050 deaths. But LA County’s public health director, Barbara Ferrer, said the large number of new cases reported Friday included a backlog of 500 cases reported by one lab.
Ferrer said restaurants, hair salons and barbershops could reopen immediately if they are ready to follow a checklist of protocols that include such things as diagrams on how to achieve distancing in smaller spaces. No inspections are necessary, she said.