State extends stay at-home order as ICU capacity dwindles

State officials have extended the Bay Area’s stay-at-home order as hospital capacity remains low across the region and coronavirus cases explode.

The California Department of Public Health directive was poised to expire Friday if projections for regional intensive- care unit capacity improved. But with current capacity at just 3%, the region — alongside San Joaquin Valley, Southern California and the greater Sacramento area — will remain under the shelter-inplace for now, state officials said in a statement.

The department clarified later that while the Bay Area is still subject to the stay-at-home order, it would issue a formal decision for the re

gion Tuesday.

The ICU projections are recalculated daily based off a number of factors, including current ICU capacity,

rates of community transmission and cases, and the proportion of COVID-19 patients admitted to hospitals, the state said.

Local officials have anticipated the extension for days as they grapple with rising infections and increasingly overwhelmed

hospitals. At the end of December, San Francisco extended its own stay- athome order indefinitely ahead of CDPH; in a statement Saturday, Santa Clara County officials said they expected to remain under the directive “for some time.”

St ate r ules prohibit gatherings outside one’s own household and requires that indoor retailers operate at 20% capacity, among other restrictions. To date, California has tallied about 2.6 million COVID-19 cases and 28,538 deaths.