In today’s state briefing, Governor Gavin Newsom reported that the state of California has made progress bending the curve but the risk of COVID19 is still very real. He continued his assessment in saying the state is “weeks” away from making the first changes. The governor said California’s residents have largely abided by stay-at-home orders and hospitalizations for COVID-19 have remained stable over the past few weeks.
The new plan come two weeks after the governor laid out six indicators for lifting the orders. They include benchmarks for expanding the state’s testing capacity, protecting the most vulnerable, addressing the hospitals’ needs, working on developing therapeutics and potentially a vaccine and deciding on how physical distancing would look when orders are lifted.
These indicators will help guide when the state can take each step to ease restrictions, according to Newsom.
“Politics will not drive our decision making, protest won’t drive our decision making, political pressure will not drive our decision making. The science, the data, public health will drive our decision making,” the governor said.
The governor warned that even if some restrictions are loosened in the coming weeks, the state needs to be ready to respond in case there’s a spike in infections.
“If we pull back and we modify our stay-at-home too early and we start to see an increase and surge in cases, hospitalizations and spread, then we have to have the ability to toggle back, we have to have the ability to adjust, we have to have the ability to fix it,” Newsom said.
He announced details on how the state plans to modify the Stay-At-Home order in the future. These modifications are based on science, health & data & will happen in 4 stages:
