California Governor, Gavin Newsom, has issued a new stay-at-home order and provided a COVID-19 vaccine update for California residents in the most recent press conference.
The new order being implemented is called the “Regional Stay-at-Home order.” What this means is that regions where the remaining ICU capacity falls below 15%, will be placed into this Stay-at-Home order for three weeks.
The sectors that will be temporarily closed when a region is placed into the order include bars, wineries, personal services, hair salons and barbershops.
The sectors that will remain open under the order includes schools that have already received their waivers to open, critical infrastructures around the state, retail businesses at 20% capacity to reduce exposure and take-out and delivery from restaurants.
All non-essential travel is also temporarily restricted state-wide.
The regions are comprised of the five areas in the state defined by pre-existing mutual aid-systems: Northern California, Bay Area, Greater Sacramento, San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.
The projected date to fall below the 15% threshold for most of these regions is early December. The Bay Area’s projected date to fall below 15% is mid-late December.
The Drafting Guidelines Workgroup and Community Advisory Committee have also finalized recommendations for who will receive the initial vaccine, Phase 1A. Their recommendations include groups in the critical healthcare workforce and long-term care residents.
Approximately 327,600 available doses have been sub-prioritized into three tiers.
The first tier includes psychiatric and correctional facility hospitals, skilled nursing facilities and similar settings for the older and medically vulnerable individuals, paramedics, EMTs and dialysis centers.
The second tier includes intermediate care facilities, home health care, community health workers and primary care clinics.
The third tier includes dental and oral health clinics, specialty clinics and pharmacy staff who aren’t working in settings in the higher tiers.
There are six regions in California that the vaccine will be distributed to and the number of doses given will be different for each region depending on priority. These regions are not to be confused with the five regions stated in the Stay-at-Home order as they are different and distinguished.
All of the information relating to the new Regional Stay-at-Home order and updates to the vaccine distribution in California can be found at covid19.ca.gov.
