Gov. Gavin Newsom, faced with criticism that the state economy opened too soon, said Monday the state will expand monitoring of counties affected by the virus after cracking down on restaurants and bars, ignoring restrictions over the weekend. July 4th.
As coronavirus hospitalizations continue to rise, Newsom said state agents with the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control visited about 6,000 restaurants and bars over the holiday weekend. In addition, officials from the Division of Occupational Safety and Health contacted 440,000 other companies to ensure they pay attention to the strictest restrictions on indoor activities for most of the state.
The majority of those establishments were in the 23 counties in California that are now on the state’s coronavirus watch list, including Southern California and the Bay Area counties, all of which showed alarming increases in key metrics for public health, including hospitalizations and community transmission.
“We have not lost our energy, our capacity, our focus, our determination, our desire to do what we did at the beginning of this pandemic, and that is to bend the curve to tame this growth and mitigate the spread of this disease.” Newsom said during his COVID-19 briefing in Sacramento on Monday. “We will deal with these hot spots.”
The rate at which coronavirus testing in California is giving positive results has increased 39% in the past two weeks, Newsom said.
On Sunday, the state registered 5,790 patients with confirmed coronavirus infections in California hospitals, a 50% increase in the previous two weeks. On June 22, the number was 3,868. The number of intensive care unit patients statewide with confirmed coronavirus infections has increased 39% in the past two weeks.
Contra Costa County, in the San Francisco Bay Area, and rural Colusa County, northwest of Sacramento, were added to the list of regions being monitored on Sunday for their increasing number of cases and the increase. of hospitalizations. Marin, Monterey and San Diego counties joined the list on Thursday.
The changes come amid growing concern over Newsom’s response to the outbreak, including the sometimes harsh criticism in the San Jose Mercury News and Sacramento Bee in recent days.
“Newsom’s leadership has fallen woefully short,” Mercury News said in an editorial. “In the coming weeks, we will see how short the increasing number of cases in California is followed by proportional increases in hospitalizations and then deaths.”
State Senator Steven Glazer (D-Orinda) said Newsom reopened the state too quickly, squandering progress made in slowing the virus with Newsom’s first stay-at-home order issued in mid-March.
“The heart of this problem was Newsom’s decision on May 8 to allow counties to speed up the reopening by meeting certain benchmarks,” Glazer said in an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee. “That decision came when the state’s infection rate was not going down and we had little information about how people were infected, despite being on site for 60 days.”
Newsom on Monday contested that, saying the reopening of the state could be done safely, as long as safeguards are in place and Californians comply with restrictions announced by state and local governments, while ensuring the safety of themselves. and from loved ones using face covers, frequent hand washing, and a safe distance from non-family members.
Can you safely reopen? I think you can, but with compliance and individual responsibility, “Newsom said. “We set those expectations. We focus on how to responsibly reopen certain sectors of the economy. And now it is up to all of us not only to monitor that but to enforce those rules and regulations. It is exactly what we are doing. “
