California will look at 6 factors to determine when stay-at-home orders will loosen, Newsom says

Slowing hospitalization rates and dramatically increased testing are the top factors California officials are assessing to determine when to loosen stay-at-home orders designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday.

The plan aims to transition the state from the current stay-at-home orders that have ground much of the state’s economy to a halt to a point when there is a vaccine or widespread immunity to the virus.

Newsom did not announce a specific timeline for reopening. Instead, he described what evidence state officials will need to see that danger from the virus has waned before they make changes to the orders.

“This cannot be a permanent state,” Newsom said. “These stay-at-home orders have a profound impact on the economy.”

Newsom says his team is looking at six areas to determine when and how to start reopening the state’s economy:

• Expanding testing
• Protecting high risk groups, including seniors, the medically vulnerable and people in facilities like nursing homes
• Ensuring hospitals have enough beds and supplies to care for patients
• Progress in developing treatments
• Ability of schools and businesses to support physical distancing
• Ability to decide when to reinstitute stay-at-home orders if needed

“The most important is our ability to expand our testing,” Newsom said.

The state must be able to test people who show symptoms and identify those in contact with people who test positive to determine how far the virus has spread, according to a presentation provided by Newsom’s office.

For now, testing in California is still limited because of supply shortages. Newsom has established a task force to dramatically ramp up testing. California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said the state’s testing capacity is not where it needs to be, and that the state should be doing tens of thousands of tests per day.

“Once we hit that level and we know that individuals who have symptoms can get tested and the results available rapidly, we’ll be able to think about modifying these orders,” Ghaly said during the Tuesday news conference.

The second parameter is to protect high risk groups. That includes ensuring seniors and other vulnerable people are able to stay in their homes to avoid catching the disease, Newsom said. It also means ensuring that the state is able to identify and contain outbreaks in places like prisons and nursing homes.

The state’s hospitals also must also be prepared, Newsom said. They must have adequate numbers of beds, ventilators and personal protective gear to care for both COVID-19 patients and people with other medical problems, said Dr. Sonia Angell, who leads the state’s Public Health Department.

Letting people move more freely will allow the virus to spread more quickly. Hospitals must be prepared to handle the increased demand expected as stay-at-home orders are eased, she said.

The reopening of the state will be less like flipping a light switch and more like adjusting a dimmer, Newsom said.

“The question everyone has on our mind is when,” Newsom said.

That will depend on the state’s ability to assess the questions laid out in the framework, he said. Officials may begin to start reopening the state if hospital rates flatten and decline over the next few weeks, Newsom said. He suggested reporters ask him again in two weeks for an updated timeline.

When the state does ease up on its orders, the state will still have protections in place. People will be encouraged to wear masks, Angell said.

Restaurants will likely have disposable menus, Newsom said. Customers might have their temperatures checked at the door. Wait staff might wear masks. Schools might have staggered times to reduce contact among students.

“Normal it will not be, at least until we have herd immunity and we have a vaccine,” Newsom said. “The prospect of mass gatherings is negligible at best.”

Newsom said evidence that the state is slowing the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 convinced him this is the right time to start planning to reopen the economy. His announcement comes nearly a month after he issued an executive order directing non-essential businesses to close and residents to stay in their homes.

On Monday, Newsom said he will work with the governors of Oregon and Washington on plans for the “incremental release of the stay-at-home” orders. The plans will rely on science, “not political pressure,” he said.

A Monday statement from Newsom, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee did not have specifics about which parts of the economy can reopen first or when that process will start. Instead, it outlined common principles, including that “residents’ health comes first,” that the states will work together and that data must show viral transmission is slowing significantly before broad reopening of the states’ economies.

In California, more than 23,000 people have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to the latest data from the state’s Department of Public Health. Nearly 760 have died, Newsom said.

Only about 5,000 confirmed and suspected coronavirus patients are hospitalized, according to the department. That’s far below the 11,000 people the state had predicted would be hospitalized at this point, according to numbers released Monday.

If those numbers remain low, they will be far under projections from Newsom’s office that indicated the state would need to add more than 50,000 hospital beds by mid-May to accommodate a surge in COVID-19 patients.

On Friday, Ghaly said the state is seeing numbers that fall within its broad projection windows, but toward the lower end – evidence Californians are slowing the spread of the virus by staying home and practicing social distancing. That means the state’s peak number of infections may not be much higher than what hospitals are seeing today, Ghaly said.

Although there are some “rays of sunshine on the horizon,” Newsom said it’s important that the state not rush to lift restrictions.

“Let’s not make the mistake of pulling the plug too early,” he said. “I don’t want to make a political decision that puts people’s lives at risk, and puts the economy at more risk.”

This story was originally published April 14, 2020 at 12:15 PM with the headline "California will look at 6 factors to determine when stay-at-home orders will loosen, Newsom says."