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Southern California Hospitals ICU capacity has crossed the red line that triggers a new stay-at-home order as COVID-19 cases reach terrifying new levels both in the state and in Los Angeles County.
Southern California and San Joaquin Valley counties are expected to implement the new ordinance at 11:59 p.m. Sunday.
The first stay-at-home order could go into effect on Sunday, and officials were not supposed to make that call until Saturday. But unless the numbers drastically change, Southern California counties and the San Joaquin Valley would fall under Stay Home Order.
The new order, which would remain in place for at least three weeks, is triggered when an area’s intensive care unit capacity drops below 15%.
The Southern California region’s capacity was 13.1% on Friday and is expected to drop to 12.5% on Saturday, the Santa Barbara County Department of Public Health said in a press release.
The order would be felt across the region, but most dramatically in suburban counties like Orange, Ventura, and Riverside, which have much less stringent restrictions than Los Angeles County, which has imposed its own stay order on the house modified a week ago. The state included in the Southern California region the following counties: Imperial, Inyo, Los Angeles, Mono, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura.
Affected communities will have to shut down personal service businesses, including hair and nail salons, playgrounds, zoos, museums, aquariums and wineries. Short-term stays in campsites would be prohibited. Restaurants will have to return to take-out service only.
Retail stores would be limited to 20% of their customer capacity indoors at all times, with requirements for store managers to ensure there is no food or drink inside .
Unlike Governor Gavin Newsom’s judgment released in the spring, most outdoor activities, including beach access and hiking, will not be affected. Similar to other state government rules, the ordinance allows local leaders to impose stricter public health rules. But stronger state orders would replace more permissive local orders. This means that the order’s planned implementation in Southern California would, for example, require restaurants to ban alfresco dining currently permitted in their local jurisdiction.
The new restrictions appear to remove the distinction between essential and non-essential retail – a 20% cap on the capacity of all stores is likely to significantly reduce the capacity of essential retailers, including supermarkets and pharmacies. In most states, essential stores had been capped at 50% capacity; in LA County, they were capped at 35%; and in Santa Clara County, 25%.
Card rooms will have to close and hotels will not be allowed to accept tourists.
Entertainment production and professional sports continue to be permitted without a live audience. Santa Clara County, however, passed a contact sports ban on Monday, forcing the San Francisco 49ers to temporarily relocate to Arizona for the team’s December games.
The California Department of Public Health released new figures on Friday evening showing that southern California as well as the San Joaquin Valley now faces a critical shortage of intensive care beds, with each area having less than 15 % of its available capacity.
Currently available intensive care capacity by region as of Friday evening:
- Bay Area: 21.2%
- Greater Sacramento area: 21.4%
- Rural Northern California: 20.9%
- San Joaquin Valley: 14.1%
- Southern California: 13.1%
“Today we had 22,000 cases, yesterday we had 18,700,” Dr. Mark Ghaly, California’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, said in an interview on Friday. “At these levels … that tells you that hospitals in just two weeks will be affected a lot more than they are now.”
The news came as California and Los Angeles County set all-time highs for reported single-day coronavirus cases on Friday.
A county-by-county tally from The Times found that more than 22,300 coronavirus cases were reported across California on Friday alone, surpassing the record set on Monday when 21,848 cases were reported. The Times counted 204 deaths reported on Friday, the second-highest single-day total in the entire pandemic.
Cumulatively, California has reported 1.3 million cases of coronavirus and more than 19,700 deaths.
LA County has broken records for one-day coronavirus cases in three of the past four days this week. 8,562 cases were reported as of Friday, according to the Times tally, breaking the record set Thursday when 7,713 were reported.
There have also been 56 recorded deaths in LA County, a single-day tally since August 19.
The county hit its fifth consecutive daily record for COVID-19-related hospitalizations, with 2,769 people currently hospitalized. Of these, nearly a quarter are in intensive care, where the number has tripled in the past six weeks.
Statewide over the past week, the state averaged more than 17,800 new cases per day, according to data compiled by the Times.
Latest news from Newsom home order has been criticized from all quarters, with some saying it’s too restrictive and will kill small businesses, while others question whether the rules are strict enough, wondering why malls will be allowed to stay open.
But many public health experts say prescriptions may just be the best – and perhaps the only – way to slow the rapid spread of the virus.
Playgrounds have been closed since the early days of the pandemic in March and started to reopen only at the end of September. Since then, however, it has become clear that children and adults from different households are still quite close to each other in a play structure, and some do not wear masks, Ghaly said, although it is a requirement for those 2 years of age or older.
Plus, there’s no real way to put capacity limits on many playgrounds, said Kate Folmar, spokesperson for the California Health and Human Services Agency.
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