Newsom orders all California counties to close indoor restaurants, bars

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday signaled a major retreat in the state’s two-month effort to recover from the economic collapse caused by the coronavirus, ordering the closure of bars, indoor restaurants, movie theaters and many other recently reopened businesses across California.

With infections surging in many parts of California and hospitals in some rural areas beginning to fill up, Newsom also further tightened business restrictions in 29 counties that together account for about 80% of the state’s population. Those counties, all of which are on a state watch list, must now close gyms, houses of worship, hair and nail salons, offices for noncritical work sectors, shopping malls and barbershops.

In the Bay Area, the more restrictive orders take effect in Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties. Santa Clara County officials said they would fall under the order starting Wednesday. The orders may apply to Alameda County in a day or two if metrics from its local outbreak don’t improve.

The new orders are effective immediately. Newsom did not say when they might be lifted.

Newsom, until Monday, had been hesitant to tighten restrictions statewide in response to California’s outbreak, which has been swelling since Memorial Day, when the governor began granting permission for large swaths of the economy to reopen.

Cases have climbed dramatically since then, and the number of people hospitalized and in intensive care with COVID-19 has increased steadily. As of Monday, more than 36,000 confirmed cases had been reported in the Bay Area and 334,000 statewide. The state has been reporting, on average, more than 8,000 new cases a day over the past week.

“This virus is not going away any time soon,” Newsom said during a news conference in Sacramento County on Monday. “It’s incumbent upon all of us to recognize soberly that COVID-19 is not going away ... until there is a vaccine and/or an effective therapy.”

Newsom this month had directed counties on the watch list to close indoor restaurants, theaters, wineries, museums, cardrooms and family entertainment centers, such as bowling alleys and arcades. The governor extended that order Monday to all 58 California counties, though in most places some of those establishments are still allowed to operate outdoors, including restaurant patios.

Infectious disease and public health experts said Monday they were relieved the governor had issued new orders. Health officials have zeroed in on bars, with their lack of physical distancing and customer face coverings, as a major potential source of spreading coronavirus. The new restrictions on bars require them to close all operations, indoors and out.

“I’m all for what he’s suggested. And I’m sorry it wasn’t done two weeks ago,” said John Swartzberg, an infectious disease expert at UC Berkeley. “It’s too late for all the people who have gotten infected and gotten sick and all the people who have died. But it’s certainly not too late to get control.”

Swartzberg and other experts said the state won’t know for a couple of weeks whether bar closures and other restrictions have had the desired effect of slowing the disease. The coronavirus can have a long incubation period, and people may not get tested until a few days after symptoms begin. Plus, it’s taking a week or longer to get back test results in many places.

Across the state, the average number of daily coronavirus cases nearly doubled between June and July. In June, counties reported an average of 4,007 new cases a day, compared with 8,211 over the last week. The statewide rate of people who test positive has also climbed in the last week, to about 7.7%. The World Health Organization recommends countries are only safe to reopen when the positive test rate is below 5%.

Hospitalizations have increased 28% in the last two weeks statewide; nearly 6,500 people were in the hospital with COVID-19 as of Monday.

Much of the Bay Area already had slowed down or stopped reopening in recent weeks as daily case reports and hospitalizations rose to concerning new peaks. Sonoma County announced over the weekend it was closing bars, wine tasting and indoor dining. Napa and Marin counties also shuttered indoor dining and other businesses.

Contra Costa County on Saturday said it was banning indoor worship services due to rising rates of positive coronavirus test results. San Francisco backed off plans to resume indoor dining this week.

Santa Clara County, which has been slow to reopen, allowed only gyms, hair and nail salons and some other indoor operations to resume on Monday. All of those operations were set to close again on Wednesday, county officials said.

Both Santa Clara and Alameda counties were added to the watch list on Sunday, but would only fall under new restrictions after remaining on the list for three consecutive days. Santa Clara County officials announced the new closures in anticipation of still being on the list. Alameda County officials did not state their plans Monday.

“Given the circumstances, it’s an appropriate step,” said Laine Hendricks, spokeswoman for Marin County Public Health, of Newsom’s orders. “It’s unfortunate because there are some businesses that just reopened here, such as hair salons and barbershops. But given the state of COVID-19 not only in Marin, but the global ecosystem, we need to do what we can to get a handle on the spread of COVID.”

Most Bay Area counties have reported record-breaking daily case counts in July. On Monday, at least three counties reported triple-digit cases for the day. The average number of daily cases also nearly doubled between June and July. In June, Bay Area counties reported an average of 393 new cases each day, compared with 809 a day so far this month;

The region also reported a new peak in the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19: 594 as of Monday.

In addition to concerns about urban counties in the Bay Area and Southern California, the state acted because of fears about growing hospitalizations in rural areas, Newsom said. He cited Placer and Lake counties as areas where hospital intensive care units are filled almost to capacity.

California is one of many states where cases are growing at an alarming rate. The United States has reported more than 3.3 million confirmed cases — about a quarter of the total worldwide — and 135,500 deaths. Daily case reports have been rising, in some places alarmingly fast, across most of the country. On Sunday, Florida reported a one-day record of 15,300 new cases.

In a video interview with Stanford’s dean of medicine Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, said the U.S. fell short of effectively tackling its initial outbreak, which is leading now to major upticks across much of the country.

“If you physically separate people to the point of not allowing the virus to transmit — and the only way to do that is by draconian means of essentially shutting down the country — we know that we can do that if we shut down,” Fauci told Lloyd Minor, dean of Stanford’s School of Medicine. “The Europeans have done it, people in Asia have done it. We did not shut down entirely.”

The U.S. now needs to “drop back a few yards,” while recognizing that the country cannot “stay shut down forever,” he said. He added that California is “a bit of a mixed bag” in how it’s handling the surge, but the Bay Area is generally faring better than counties in Southern California, particularly along the Mexico border.

Newsom’s administration began allowing counties in May to move ahead on reopening businesses including indoor restaurants and shopping malls if they hit benchmarks in slowing the spread and creating capacity to contain a surge. Most counties have allowed many nonessential businesses to reopen, although the pace has been slower in the Bay Area than elsewhere.

Newsom was asked several times why his administration was leaving the issue of school reopenings up to districts when the state has concluded that much indoor activity is unsafe. Several counties — including Santa Clara, Los Angeles and San Diego — have announced that schools will not return with in-person learning when classes restart at the end of summer.

The governor said the state is developing more stringent guidelines for schools to reopen, including rules related to masks, contact sports and busing. He said those guidelines would be updated in a few days.

The governor urged Californians to avoid mingling with people outside of those living in their households. If people must venture outside the home, Newsom implored them to wear masks or gather outdoors.

“Please, please take seriously the fact that positivity rates are growing in the state and across many parts of the country,” he said. “Continue to be vigilant.”