BURBANK (CBSLA) – Los Angeles County officially switched to the state’s least restrictive red level on Monday, allowing restaurants to resume indoor meals and indoor cinemas and gyms to reopen.
The AMC Burbank 16 in downtown Burbank, California. The cinema will open alongside AMC Century City 15 to the public for regular screenings on Monday, March 15, for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic occurred in March 2020. March 13, 2021. (Getty Images)
After spending more than six months on the purple and more restrictive level of state reopening metrics, Los Angeles County qualified on Friday to officially move to the red level starting on Monday.
Orange County also moved to the red level on Sunday.
“We already know that we are going to Gus’s barbecue in South Pasadena because we love that place and it is closed forever!” said Helena Vlahos of Monrovia.
The move out of the red went into effect at 12:01 pm, which means that indoor meals can return and indoor cinemas and gyms can reopen, all with limited capacity.
Restaurants will be able to open indoors at 25% capacity in accordance with LA County guidelines, released last week. There must be 2.5 meters of distance between tables, with a limit of six people per table. Only members of the same family can sit together. Restaurant waiters must already wear a face mask and face shield.
“It is very cold outside, and being able to enter will open up our opportunity to serve more people,” Chef George Marin of Burbank’s Great Grill told CBSLA Friday.
Martin struggled to stay strong, with three of the four other companies on his block closing.
“We are suffering, but we are still here and we love our customers, so getting some is a great start and, hopefully, in the spring or summer we will be getting back to normal again,” said Martin.
The cinemas will be able to open indoors with 25% capacity. It will be the first time that movie theaters will be reopened since they were all closed when the pandemic settled in March 2020, paralyzing the film industry in the process.
Museums, zoos and aquariums can open indoors with 25% capacity. Gyms, gyms, yoga and dance studios will be able to work indoors with 10% capacity.
Retail and personal care services will be allowed to increase capacity to 50% with the need for masking.
Some businessmen were skeptical about the news.
“I learned in this environment not to get too excited about anything,” said Misty Mansouri on Thursday, owner of Café Lady Byrd in Echo Park.
“It’s scary to go into this world without really knowing what’s going to happen because you get information one day and, a few days later, it changes,” said JD Friedman, from Basin 141.
State health leaders announced on Thursday that breweries, wineries and distilleries can reopen outdoors, even if they do not serve food. However, this does not apply to bars in the purple and red layers.
California Governor Gavin Newsom confirmed last week that LA County could be upgraded to the red level on Friday, when the state officially met its goal of administering two million COVID-19 vaccines in low-income communities and hard hit across California.
LA County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said it would take 48 hours after the state announced that the vaccination threshold had been reached for the county to officially move to the red level. I
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With that 2 million mark reached, counties are now able to move out of the more restrictive “purple” layer of the plan when their average rate of new daily COVID-19 infections reaches 10 per 100,000 residents – a more flexible pattern than the 7 per 100,000 residents.
“I hope that they will let us open as soon as possible. It has been a very difficult roller coaster year, people, in general, give us a feeling of normalcy, ”said Jesse Gomez on Thursday, the owner of a restaurant.
The red layer also allows theme parks like Disneyland in Orange County and Universal Studios Hollywood in Los Angeles County to reopen at 15% of their capacity, with only visitors in the state.
On Monday, the LA County Department of Public Health reported 422 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases and six new deaths, bringing the total number of cases across the county to 1,210,663 cases and 22,475 deaths. Health officials said the lower number of deaths could reflect delays in weekend reports.
There were 893 patients with COVID-19 hospitalized, 28% of whom were being treated in intensive care units.
With test results available for nearly 5,961,000 individuals, the county’s overall positivity rate has remained stable at 19%, although the daily positivity rate has dropped to 1.7%.
The LA County coronavirus case rate is currently at 6.9 daily cases per 100,000 residents, according to the latest state figures.
(© Copyright 2021 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All rights reserved. The city’s news service contributed to this report.)