California Governor Gavin Newsom ordered Monday to suspend indoor activities at certain businesses across the state as coronavirus cases increase in the country’s most populous state.
Newsom, a Democrat, announced during a press conference that all bars across the state should close their stores and that restaurants, wineries, tasting rooms, family entertainment centers, zoos, museums and game rooms should suspend activities. indoor.
The governor also announced that all non-critical gyms, houses of worship, shopping malls, personal care services, hair salons, salons and offices in counties on the state’s “watch list” had to close under the new order. The order affects more than 30 counties that house about 80 percent of California’s population.
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“We have made this point multiple times and that is, we are returning to a way of modifying our original order to stay home,” Newsom said during his press conference. “This is still a deadly disease.”
As of Monday, the state had reported more than 320,000 cases of COVID-19 and more than 7,000 deaths, with 23 people dying from the virus since Sunday. Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the country, leads both the state and the country in the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 with more than 133,000, according to the Johns University Center for Science and Systems Engineering (CSSE) Hopkins.
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In March, California became the first state to impose a mandatory stay-at-home order to slow the spread of the virus. Public health officials praised the state’s swift action and marveled at how the country’s most populous state kept its cases and hospitalizations low, while states like New York and New Jersey struggled to contain the highly contagious disease.
In late April, Newsom, under increasing pressure, began allowing business and activities to resume, citing the state’s increased hospital capacity to handle a further surge in cases. Cases began to rise in early June and have since exploded, increasing 48 percent in the past two weeks, while hospitalizations have increased 40 percent.
Newsom’s announcement comes just hours after the state’s two largest school districts, Los Angeles and San Diego, announced that they will not reopen in-person instruction when the 2020-21 academic year begins next month. Districts said they will plan in-person learning as health conditions allow.
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Also on Monday, the World Health Organization warns that the pandemic is worsening globally and that things will not return to “the old normal” for some time.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
