Gov. Gavin Newsom Outlines Six-Point Guide To Help Reopen California

Erik Pedersen
·3 min read

Click here to read the full article.

Gov. Gavin Newsom today offered a guide on how to “reopen” California’s economy as authorities mull lifting restrictions that have been in place for nearly a month. He discussed six key factors to help inform state officials about when to dial back stay-at-home orders issued amid the conoravirus outbreak..

Watch him outline the plan in the clip above, or watch his full news conference and Q&A session below.

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“This phase is one where science – public health, not politics, must be the guide,” he said during a televised address that was carried live on some national cable news networks. “Where must be open to argument, interested in evidence, where we cannot be ideological in any way, shape or form in terms of how we approach a condition that changes on an hourly and daily basis – conditions that will ultimately determine what decisions we make.”

Since Newsom issued his statewide stay-at-home policy on March 19, the state has seen a “flattening of the curve” of COVID-19 infections and deaths, according to officials.

Here are the main points of the guidelines Newsom announced today, with his exact words in quotation marks:

  1. Expand testing “to appropriately address the tracing and tracking of individuals – the isolation and the quarantine of individuals using the technology and using a workforce that needs to be trained in an infrastructure that needs to be in place in order to begin the process to transition.”

  2. Continue to protect “the most vulnerable populations in the state of California from infection and spread,” primarily seniors, the homeless and people with immune deficiencies.

  3. Provide needed PPE and other resources to hospitals and their staffs and prepare for potential surges in COVID-19 cases “as we adopt new strategies [and] we loosen the stay-at-home orders. … We need to make sure that that infrastructure is protected and to make sure that hose assets are well prepared.”

  4. Continue to work closely with academics and research partners “as we bridge, ultimately, toward the herd immunity and a vaccine within, we hope, the next year or so.”

  5. Redrawing floor plans in businesses, schools, playgrounds and other facilities – “large and small, public and private” — to incorporate safe physical distancing.

  6. Maintain the capacity to “reinstate more vigorous controls” – to “turn on that faucet again,” as Newsome put it. That process, he said, “will perhaps be the most challenging if indeed we lean in but we have to then lean back out as we toggle from stricter to looser interventions, back and forth, as things change [and] data comes in.”

Here is Newsom’s full address and news conference:

 

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