Newsom Announces Stay-at-Home Order

Gavin Newsom announces new ‘regional’ stay-at-home order tied to ICU capacity

For weeks, Gov. Gavin Newsom has warned Californians of another stay-at-home order and on Thursday he made good on his word.

Regions of California where hospitals are in danger of overload will be subject to a new stay-at-home order, with some parts of the state projected to reach that point later this week, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday.

The new order will apply in regions where available intensive care unit capacity drops below 15%, according to the Newsom administration. The new rules group California counties into five regions:

• Greater Sacramento: Alpine, Amador, Butte, Colusa, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Sacramento, Sierra, Sutter, Yolo, Yuba
• San Joaquin Valley: Calaveras, Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, San Benito, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Tulare, Tuolumne
• Northern California: Del Norte, Glenn, Humboldt, Lake, Lassen, Mendocino, Modoc, Shasta, Siskiyou, Tehama, Trinity
• Bay Area: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Monterey, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano, Sonoma
• Southern California: Imperial, Inyo, Los Angeles, Mono, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura

The stay-at-home order will apply to areas where ICU Capacity falls under 15%. That includes Los Angeles County, which had only 122 such beds left as of Wednesday; Imperial County, which had only 2 ICU beds available on Thursday; and counties in the state’s Central Valley. It was unclear, however, how those county numbers would impact each of the 5 regions. Newsom indicated that many of the new regions would be under the 15% ICU threshold in a matter of days.

On Wednesday, the state’s Covid-19 dashboard indicated that 20,759 new cases had been reported over the past 24 hours. That’s nearly 2,500 more cases than the previous high of 18,350. Even worse, as testing numbers have generally trended upward, the state’s test positivity rate has still skyrocketed. (More tests usually mean a declining positivity rate.)

On Thursday, California reported 18,951 new cases. That’s second only Wednesday’s number and marks the third time in 10 days the state has breached the previously staggering 18,000 daily new cases mark. The 7-day average of cases is 15,121.

The state’s 14-day average test positivity rate was 7.0% on Thursday. That’s up 1.8% in the past week alone.