“It’s not just about seeing trend lines go down, but having infrastructure to support lifting stay at home orders is a precise, targeted and gradual way,” Newsom added. But, noting the apparent flattening of the curve of new cases and hospitalizations, he said he’s overall optimistic about when society and the economy can start up again and that it will, eventually, happen. He called out retail specifically, saying the industry will “need redesigned policies and procedures” for worker interaction and with the public. He said businesses will need to make similar changes to keep workers at a distance. He posited that people will likely continue wearing masks in public. Newsom mentioned the possibility that schools will have staggered start times to limit crowds of students. Indicators include an increase in testing, which the state expects to exceed 10,000 a day this month, as well as a system for “tracing” active and potential coronavirus cases (through the Check In app and other measures), and the assurance that schools and businesses are able to enact social distancing procedures when they go back to operating.Īll of it sounds as though people will be entering a new state of semi-permanent public health civility when they are allowed to reenter society. In an effort to get the state’s economy going again, Newsom has also assembled a new group of economic leaders, set to give a press conference this week, and identified a number of indicators for when the state can expand the definition of an essential business, allowing more to reopen. Newsom did not address any potential privacy concerns, but did say it could create thousands of jobs and that some state staff are already being “reprioritized” to work on the program. He did not go into great detail about the app, but said it is meant to aid with “tracing efforts,” so the tracking of people infected or potentially infected by the virus. On the less visible side of things, Newsom mentioned a new program being tested called “Check In” that state officials are currently deciding which app platform, Google or Apple, to use as host. That’s not to say Newsom is taking a complacent position, but he doesn’t want to “get ahead of ourselves and make the mistake of pulling the plug too early - I don’t want to make a political decision that puts lives at risk.” That could mean no beaches all summer, no Memorial Day trips and no large Fourth of July celebrations. Newsom said the idea that mass gatherings will be allowed again in the next six months, if not more, “is not in the cards” based on the current projections of the disease. He only allowed that, if in two weeks’ time there is a “continued decline, not just a flattening” of cases of the virus, “then we can be more prescriptive on the timeline.”īut even then, many norms, those visible and not, in the state are likely to be much changed. Taking such a position, Newsom did not give a timeline as to when the state’s lockdown, which has kept almost 40 million people largely at home and closed all non-essential business in the state, might come to an end. “We’ll be toggling back and forth between less restrictive and more restrictive measures, more individual responsibility with face coverings and isolation, and more enforcement along those lines.” “There’s no light switch here, it’s more like a dimmer,” Newsom said, dismissing the idea that the coronavirus measures will simply be lifted at some point.
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