Gov. Newsom announces new restrictions in 19 California counties to slow coronavirus spread

California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered closures and restrictions for several activities in 19 counties to check the rising rates of coronavirus cases in the state.

Video Transcript

GAVIN NEWSOM: Those 19 counties, again, that have been impacted by our action, these are the counties that have been on the watch list for at least three consecutive days. Those counties, large and small, all up and down the state-- remember, California has 58 counties. These are 19 counties within the state. But these 19 counties represent over 70% of the population here in the state of California.

With that, we have specifically targeted our efforts to close indoor operations. And I want to reinforce this-- indoor operations in restaurants, wineries, and tasting rooms, movie theaters, family entertainment, broadly defined by guidelines that we have previously put out, zoos, museums, and card rooms in this state.

I should note in anticipation of the question that we have casinos in the state of California that are operating, tribal sovereign nations. We are working very collaboratively, as we did with the original stay-at-home order, and working with the guidelines that we put forth to allow them to make modifications to their operations so they could reopen in certain counties in the state of California. We are in deep conversations. And we'll be making public the fruits of those efforts to at least get a rationale of understanding between our sovereign nation-- our partners and our sovereign nations and the state of California.

So indoor operations-- this doesn't mean restaurants shut down. It means that we're trying to take the activities, as many activities as we can, these mixed activities, these concentrated activities, and move them outdoors, which is a way of mitigating the spread of this virus. Not dissimilar, by the way, some of these actions, as you've seen in other states across the country-- again, based upon our information that come back from our health directors and from the evidence that has been grounded and provided to us all across the world, not just across the rest of the nation, as it relates to the unique characteristics of being indoors for an extended period of time and airflow issues and the prospect of increased transmission of COVID-19.

We have as well made very clear our concerns around bars operating in the state of California. We had originally-- and this was on Sunday-- put out guidelines for seven counties that prohibited bar operations. We had recommended for an additional number of counties-- seven additional counties. So there were total of, excuse me, 15 counties that we had originally mandated or recommended bar closure.

With the addition of four counties now in that three-day watch list, we're just moving forward to close the operation of all of those bars in all of the 19 counties that I had just put forth.