From SFGate:
California lifted the stay-at-home orders for all regions across California Monday, a turn of good news as the surge shows signs of improvement with new cases and hospitalizations on the decline.
Now, all counties are reverting back to following the color-coded tier system that was in place before the more restrictive lockdown. Most counties are in the strictest purple tier, according to the health department.
The order imposed on Dec. 10 banned gatherings outside a household and shuttered or restricted many businesses. With virus cases and hospitalizations more stable now, the state allows counties to resume outdoor dining and worship services, reopen hair and nail salons and other businesses, and increase capacity at retailers. Gatherings of up to three households are allowed.
The new development Monday impacts the Bay Area, Southern California and San Joaquin Valley regions where the order remained in place. The order was already lifted in Sacramento, and Northern California never reached the threshold of intensive care unit capacity falling under 15%.
California’s tier system runs as follows:
The Los Angeles Times says this:
State officials have not released a full accounting of how four-week ICU calculations were being made. And although services were allowed to reopen in the Sacramento region on Dec. 13, daily reports of available intensive care beds never approached the 15% threshold deemed necessary to cancel the restrictions. ICU capacity in the Northern California region, which is not under the stay-at-home order, has continued to remain above the state’s shutdown benchmarks.
The Bay Area had remained under the stay-at-home order due to a four-week projection of a decrease in hospital bed availability. Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley region reported little to no ICU capacity.
After a winter surge, coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are beginning to decline across the state.
But California is continuing to see a record-breaking number of deaths from COVID-19, a lagging indicator of the surge.
And this from the Fresno Bee:
A decision Monday by state leaders to lift a regional stay-at-home order for the San Joaquin Valley, as well as two other major parts of the state, means that restaurants in Fresno County and its neighboring counties can immediately resume outdoor dining, while barbers and hairstylists can start cutting hair indoors once again.
Instead of sweeping restrictions on many types of business operations aimed at reducing the spread of the novel coronavirus and easing a surge of cases putting a strain on hospitals, Valley counties will now revert back to a system of color-coded tiers for business reopening based on the prevalence of new COVID-19 infections and the assessed risk of transmitting the virus in the community.
Fresno, Kings, Madera, Merced and Tulare counties will resume their status in purple Tier 1 of the state’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy. Tier 1 is the most restrictive of the four levels, representing “widespread” risk of spreading the virus. But it does allow restaurants to immediately be able to offer outdoor dining.
But here’s the Joker in the deck: inoculations.
from the Sacramento Bee:
It will take nearly the rest of the year to vaccinate half of California’s residents against COVID-19 at the current pace of inoculation.
There are about 40 million Californians. Current vaccines require two doses. From January 14 through January 24, the state used, on average, about 122,000 doses per day.
At that pace, about 20 million Californians would be fully inoculated against the disease around Thanksgiving. Three-quarters of the state would be inoculated around Memorial Day 2022.
So while we’re waiting for the shots, the chances of another rise in the infection rate are distinctly possible.