Governor Gavin Newsom is expected to suspend coronavirus hospitalization requests throughout California on Monday, a change that could allow restaurants and gyms in many counties to reopen restaurants and outdoor services.
All counties will return to the colored tier system that assigns local risk levels based on case numbers and rates of positive test results for COVID-19 infections, according to sources informed about the plan by the governor’s office.
Most counties will go to the “generalized” risk level, which allows beauty salons to offer limited services in closed environments, but restricts many other non-essential commercial operations in closed environments. The change is expected to take effect immediately after Newsom’s announcement on Monday.
It is unclear whether the decision will lead to loosening of home stay rules in Los Angeles County, which has become a national epicenter of the coronavirus with hospitals crowded with patients. In less than a month, more than 5,000 people died of COVID-19 in the county alone.
Still, the ban on outdoor dining has been highly controversial, with some elected officials and the restaurant industry fighting in court to overthrow it. Officials in some other southern California counties have been even more critical of state-imposed rules and urged Newsom to give them more local control.
The governor announced regional home stay orders on December 3, in an effort to reduce pressure on hospitals as the number of cases increased. Although state data shows that hospital systems in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley remain tense, the Newsom administration told officials on Sunday that the ICU capacity design models in these areas will exceed 15% – a limit for suspending regional outages – in the next four weeks.
State officials never released all the details of how the four-week ICU calculations were being made. And while services were allowed to reopen in the Sacramento area on December 13, the daily reports of available intensive care beds never approached the 15% limit deemed necessary to lift the restrictions. The ICU’s capacity in the Northern California region, which is not under the order of stay at home, has remained above the state’s shutdown benchmarks.
The Bay Area, which reported 23.4% of capacity, remained under the order of staying at home due to a four-week projection of a reduction in the availability of hospital beds. Southern California showed no ICU capacity and the San Joaquin Valley region reported 1.3%, according to state data published on Saturday.
John Myers and Paloma Esquivel contributed to this report.