Gov. Gavin Newsom lifted regional stay-at-home orders Monday morning in response to sustained reductions in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, allowing more businesses to reopen under limited conditions.
The move means that certain activities such as outdoor dining and indoor hair and nail salons can resume — with capacity restrictions and mask mandates — in many counties across the state, including in the Bay Area.
“We have battled our way through the most challenging surge and are seeing light at the end of that proverbial tunnel,” Newsom said during his Monday news briefing.
The Bay Area was one of three regions that had still been under stay-at-home orders, along with San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.
Monday’s announcement returns the state’s 58 counties to California’s colored tier reopening system, which is determined by indicators such as COVID-19 case numbers and rates of positive test results rather than the availability of ICU beds. It also marks an end to the state’s overnight stay-at-home order, which limited non-essential travel between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.
Bay Area counties — and all but four counties throughout the state — are in the state’s “purple” tier, which has the most severe restrictions. Under the purple tier, certain activities and businesses such as outdoor dining, campgrounds, hotels and short-term rentals, cardrooms, zoos and indoor hair and nail salons can open their operations with limited capacity.
Individual counties can impose stricter regulations, but San Francisco, Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin and San Mateo counties have all confirmed that they plan to follow the new state regulations — representing a shift from previous instances during the pandemic when the Bay Area clamped down further than the statewide orders required.
However, Santa Clara County will continue to impose several local restrictions, including requiring people traveling from more than 150 miles away to quarantine and limiting who can stay in local hotels.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced Monday that businesses in the city would be permitted to reopen starting Thursday, while in the rest of the Bay Area, businesses can open their doors immediately.
Mike Messinger, the owner of The Farmers Union in downtown San Jose, said Monday afternoon he is already making plans to set up his outdoor tents again on San Pedro Street and that he hopes to provide outdoor dining service within two days.
In December, when he was restricted to takeout and delivery, Messinger said the restaurant earned about 5% of the revenue it would have raked in during a typical December.
“It hurt every restaurant across the board,” he said. “But I’m extremely happy that the state and county approved us to resume outdoor activities. We saw it as a very safe environment for people to enjoy life and get back a sense of normalcy without posing a big risk of getting COVID.”
In Walnut Creek, hairstylists at Insignia Salon already had begun seeing clients by Monday afternoon. As soon as the salon’s management team heard of the statewide order lifting, it sent out texts to clients on a waitlist offering them an appointment, opened up its online booking system and reported to work.
“This closure has been an emotional rollercoaster, but I’m very excited to finally be open again,” said Ashley Flowers, a manager and stylist at Insignia Salon who has been on unemployment for the past seven weeks. “If it’s anything like last time, we’ll be busy working long hours for the next two months making up for it.”
Despite the easing of restrictions, Bay Area health officials are advising residents to continue to stay home as much as possible and avoid large gatherings, such as Super Bowl parties on Feb. 7.
“We may be past the winter surge, but COVID-19 is still with us,” Dr. Nicholas Moss, Alameda County Health Officer, said in a statement. “We are only in the early stages of our vaccination campaign, and the virus has shown us it is capable of returning again and again.
“That means that, even as we cautiously reopen, we must continue to do the things we know work to keep each other safe.”
The state’s decision to lift the order comes amid much public scrutiny and a recall campaign against Gov. Newsom. Just six weeks ago, almost all of California was placed under the state’s strictest stay-at-home order because of the dangerous surge in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations that began in late November and persisted through the winter holidays.
Although many hospital systems remain strained, state officials said the ban was lifted in accordance with projections that the Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley and Southern California would each reach above 15% ICU capacity — the state’s threshold for lifting the regional shutdowns — within four weeks.
Hospitalizations in recent weeks have fallen substantially in nearly every region of California to the point where, this past weekend, there were fewer COVID-positive patients being treated in hospitals than at any point since mid-December. Statewide, 17,810 patients are currently hospitalized with COVID-19 — an 18% drop in the past two weeks — and an average of approximately 27,250 Californians are testing positive for the virus each day over the past week.
“California is slowly starting to emerge from the most dangerous surge of this pandemic yet, which is the light at the end of the tunnel we’ve been hoping for,” said California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly. “Seven weeks ago, our hospitals and front-line medical workers were stretched to their limits, but Californians heard the urgent message to stay home when possible, and our surge after the December holidays did not overwhelm the health care system to the degree we had feared.”
Still, some health experts are expressing concerns about reopening the economy too quickly again, especially with new and potentially more contagious variants of the coronavirus spreading in California and across the world. Newsom was faulted by critics and some local officials for moving too fast to reopen businesses this summer, allowing the virus to spread further.
While cases and hospitalizations decline, deaths caused by COVID-10 continue to stack up, with an average of nearly 500 per day over the past week and a monthly total of well over 10,000 — far and away the state’s deadliest month of the pandemic with still another week to go.
Dr. Supriya Narasimhan, chief of Infectious Diseases at Santa Clara County Valley Medical Center, said if people let their guard down again, the state likely could see another surge in COVID-19.
If that happens, Narasimhan said she’s worried about health care worker fatigue and staffing shortages as health care systems attempt to balance treating an influx of coronavirus patients and fulfilling their vaccination goals.
“I appreciate the fact that our small businesses and economy are really struggling with shelter-in-place and that is why the governor wants to lift it, but we’re still seeing high rates of transmission in certain pockets, and I don’t think we’ve rolled out enough vaccines to see the protection we need at a community level,” she said.
Staff writers Evan Webeck, Nico Savidge and Emily Deruy contributed to this story.
