Los Angels County will ease restrictions on coronavirus on Monday, joining Orange County in enacting more flexible regulations, now that both are on the orange layer of the state’s monitoring system.
Restrictions are set to be relaxed just after midnight. Here’s what that means.
- Cinemas, restaurants, churches, museums, zoos and aquariums can have 25% to 50% capacity.
- The academy’s capacity will be increased from 10% to 25%.
- Game rooms and family entertainment centers can resume internal operations at 25% capacity.
The county will still apply certain rules that are stricter than allowed by the state. Most notably, bars that do not serve food – which can only reopen outdoors – will only be able to operate from 11:30 am to 10:00 pm, with a mandatory distance of 2.5 meters between the outside tables.
And while state guidelines allow all capacity restrictions to be lifted at orange-level retail outlets, Los Angeles County will impose a 75% limit on supermarkets and other retail operations, while strongly recommending that they remain with 50% of capacity by April 15 to allow time for more workers to be vaccinated.
County metrics continued in the right direction on Sunday, with 535 new cases of COVID-19 and just three additional deaths, although health officials said the lower number of deaths may reflect delays in notification over the weekend.
The number of coronavirus patients in municipal hospitals rose from 590 on Saturday to 591, according to state data. The number of these patients in intensive care dropped from 158 to 151.
Plan your vaccine: how and where to be vaccinated.
Sunday’s figures brought the county total to 1,222,114 cases and 23,275 deaths since the pandemic began, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
While most of the orange-level rules will not go into effect until Monday, the rules for theme parks and outdoor live event venues – such as Dodger Stadium – went into effect on Thursday. These rules allowed theme parks to open at 25% capacity and outdoor locations at 33% capacity.
Breweries and wineries will be able to offer indoor service with 25% of capacity as of Monday. Breweries, wineries, bars and restaurants will be able to turn on their outdoor television sets, but live entertainment is still prohibited.
California’s COVID-19 vaccinations
The map tracks the number of doses administered by the recipient’s county of residence, according to the California Department of Public Health.