Newsom announces new stay-at-home order impacting Fresno, most California counties
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced broad new regional stay-at-home orders that could take effect within days to help combat an ongoing increase in coronavirus cases across California.
In Fresno County and the rest of the San Joaquin Valley from Kern County in the south through San Joaquin County in the north, the measure would be triggered when hospitals across the region dip down to 15% or less of capacity in their intensive-care units. When that happens, some services that have been allowed to be open in Fresno County would face a closure of at least three weeks, including barber shops, hair salons and other personal-care services.
Under the measures announced Thursday, once the regional threshold is reached, retailers would be limited to 20% capacity for indoor operations, and restaurants would be limited to only take-out and delivery services, with no outdoor dining.
Also included in the program is a restriction on all non-essential travel statewide.
Schools that have already reopened under county and state waivers by the time a stay-at-home order takes effect would be able to stay open.
The Valley is one of five regions for calculating the 15% ICU capacity threshold that would touch off the new orders. Newsom said he expects that four of the five could reach that level “within the next day or two,” and that the entire state would be included by the end of December.
Instead of restrictions on a county-by-county basis, orders would take effect on a regional basis. In the San Joaquin Valley, that will include Fresno, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, Tulare, Calaveras, San Benito, San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Tuolumne counties. After three weeks, the entire region would be re-evaluated based on hospital capacity and rates of new COVID-19 cases, and the orders lifted after ICU capacity returns to more than 15% and transmission rates are going down, said Dr. Mark Ghaly, state secretary of Health and Human Services.
The governor said earlier this week that “drastic” action could be considered in the face of key coronavirus trends getting worse across the state.
Those concerns were in regards to soaring numbers of new cases emerging each day based on testing, a higher percentage of people testing positive for infection with the virus, and an increase in admission of COVID-19 patients into hospitals.
“The botton line is, if we don’t act now, our hospital system will be overwhelmed,” Newsom said Thursday. Hospitalizations statewide have increased by 86% over the last 14 days, and the number of deaths per day statewide has also climbed, from 14 deaths on Nov. 2 to back-to-back days each with 113 deaths this week.
The surge of COVID-19 infections is already putting a pinch on the capacity of intensive-care units to care for sick people in the central San Joaquin Valley counties: Fresno, Kings, Madera, Merced, and Tulare..
The measures announced Thursday, once triggered, will represent even tighter restrictions on businesses in Fresno County and other counties than have already been in place under the state’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy, introduced in late August to provide for a gradual county-by-county easing of limitations based on the level of risk for COVID-19 to spread in the community.
They also come on the heels of Newsom’s limited stay-at-home order issued last month, closing “non-essential” businesses between the hours of 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. in counties in Tier 1 of the state blueprint program. The new orders will supercede the blueprint tiers.
“This is a temporary state,” Newsom said. “This is what many had projected. We had predicted the final surge of this pandemic.”
But “there is light at the end of the tunnel,” he added. “We are a few months away from truly seeing real progress with the vaccine, real distribution, real accessibility, real availability. We do not anticipate having to do this once again.”
In the Valley, Fresno, Kings, Merced, Madera and Tulare counties have all been in purple Tier 1 of the state’s color-coded blueprint, representing widespread risk of viral spread. Under Tier 1, restaurants cannot offer indoor dining and are limited to outdoor dining, to-go and delivery orders. When the orders are triggered, outdoor dining will be curtailed and only to-go and delivery service allowed.
Newsom acknowledged the challenges faced in particular by the restaurant industry, which has faced an on-again, off-again existence since the spring. “I deeply empathize and have deep appreciation for the stress” that restaurant owners are going through, he said.
But, he added, the orders are “predicated on the need to stop gathering with people outside your household” and to keep activities outside, and for people to wear masks and face coverings to slow the spread of the virus.
Hair salons and barberships, which have been able to stay open under the purple tier, would be among the personal-care businesses ordered closed, along with bars and wineries, once a region’s ICU capacity falls below 15%. Salons, barbers, nail salons, tattoo and piercing businesses, massage studios and other personal-care services have been allowed to stay open indoors in purple-tier counties like Fresno and neighboring counties.
For retailers in Fresno County and other purple-tier counties, the new orders would further limit their indoor capacity to 20%. Under the purple tier of the state blueprint, they’ve been open at up to 25%.
“What we want to avoid is concentrating, just in large-box retail, too much of concentrated retail activity that actually would induce more mixing, not less,” Newsom said.
The complete list of sectors that must close once the regional order takes effect, if they are not already closed under the blueprint tiers, includes: Indoor and outdoor playgrounds, Indoor recreational facilities, Hair salons and barbershops, personal care services, museums; zoos and aquariums; movie theaters; wineries, bars, breweries and distilleries; family entertainment centers; cardrooms and satellite wagering; live audience sports; and amusement parks.
Sectors that remain open face capacity limitations as well as requirements for 100% of customers and staff to wear masks or face coverings and implement physical distancing.
Under Tier 1, churches, temples, mosques and other houses of worship cannot hold services indoors. Those would continue to operate outdoors only.
Fresno, Kings and Merced counties started in Tier 1 when the color-coded blueprint was launched in late August.
Those counties were able to advance into red Tier 2 for several weeks before falling back to purple amid a sharp rise in the rate of new cases arising daily. Under Tier 2, restaurants, churches and gyms could be open indoors at up to 25% capacity.
Madera and Tulare counties never made it out of Tier 1 before Thursday’s announcement. Mariposa County started in orange Tier 3, representing “moderate” risk of transmission, before advancing into yellow Tier 4, the least restrictive level representing “minimal” risk for business activity in the statewide blueprint.
Mariposa County was later demoted back into Tier 3, and on Saturday was pushed further back into red Tier 2.
When a region is released from the stay-at-home order, Ghaly said, each county in that region would return to the appropriate blueprint tier level based on the rate of new cases and testing positivity.
Since Thanksgiving, more than 2,300 new confirmed COVID-19 infections have surfaced in Fresno County, pushing to 39,324 the total number of residents who have tested positive for the virus in the county since the first cases were identified in early March.
In that nine-month span, the novel coronavirus has been blamed for the deaths of 488 Fresno County residents.
Across the six-county region, nearly 6,000 new cases have been reported since Thanksgiving. The region’s cumulative total now stands at more than 91,000 cases, including 1,165 people who have died from COVID-19.
This story was originally published December 3, 2020 at 12:53 PM.
