Gov. Newsom issues statewide stay at home order due to COVID-19; order in effect until further notice
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – On Thursday evening California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a statewide stay at home order to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Newsom said the order was to go into effect immediately. It remains in place until further notice.
“This is a moment we need to make tough decisions. This is a moment where we need some straight talk and we need to tell people the truth. We need to bend the curve in the state of California and in order to do that we need to recognize the reality,” Newsom said.
Earlier on Thursday, Newsom asked President Donald Trump to immediately deploy the USNS Mercy hospital ship to the Port of Los Angeles.
Newsom asked the president to keep the ship there until Sept. 1 in order to help decompress the state’s health care delivery system in Los Angeles in response to COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus.
In his letter to Trump, Newsom cited the rapid increase of confirmed COVID-19 cases across California, with a 21-percent increase over the previous 24 hours and the case rate doubling every four days in some parts of the state.
“We project that roughly 56 percent of our population – 25.5 million people – will be infected with the virus over an eight week period,” Newsom wrote.
By the time the governor announced his stay at home order on Thursday evening, 21.3 million Californians already were living under shelter in place orders.
That included Lake County, whose 65,000 residents have been under a shelter in place order – issued by Public Health Officer Dr. Gary Pace – since 12 a.m. Thursday.
Pace has said that, so far, there are no cases of the virus confirmed in Lake County, where about two dozen residents have been tested. But he also acknowledged delays in getting test results back and difficulty in finding testing labs that aren’t overcapacity.
Other counties that were under such shelter in place orders by the time of Newsom’s action included Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Mendocino, Monterey, San Benito, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and Sonoma.
Napa County’s order had been set to begin at 12 a.m. Friday and in the hours before Newsom’s order, Los Angeles and Sacramento counties also had ordered residents to stay home. Separately, residents of the cities of Berkeley and Fresno were under shelter in place orders.
The governor’s order allows essential services to remain open. Those services include gas stations, pharmacies, grocery stores, farmers markets, food banks, convenience stores, take-out and delivery restaurants, banks and laundromats/laundry services.
Also remaining open are essential state and local government functions, including law enforcement and offices that provide government programs and services.
The order directs the immediate closure of dine-in restaurants, bars and nightclubs, entertainment venues, gyms and fitness studios, public events and gatherings, and convention centers.
During his Thursday night briefing, Newsom said that in pandemic planning, state officials are estimating a 20-percent hospitalization rate, which translates to 19,543 people who would need to be hospitalized.
That’s above the existing capacity of the hospital system, said Newsom. “I’m being very straight with you.”
Newsom said California’s 416 hospitals have 78,000 staffed beds. Beyond that, they have a surge capacity of another 10,207 beds. However, he said there is a gap in resources and staffing. “That’s currently what we’re up against.”
In Lake County, both hospitals – Sutter Lakeside and Adventist Health Clear Lake – are under the Critical Access designation. Both have 25 beds, for a county total of 50 hospital beds. Dr. Pace has reported that there are a total of eight ventilators in Lake County, four at each hospital.
Newsom said that if state residents change their behaviors, it’s possible those estimated hospitalization numbers could come down and the state could bend the curve.
The governor also announced on Thursday night that the state is working to secure hundreds of more beds between two hospitals in Northern and Southern California.
State officials also are negotiating with hotels and talking with leaders of the University of California and the California State University systems to identify appropriate dormitories for locating people who contract the virus.
“This is not a permanent state. This is a moment in time. And we will meet this moment together and we will look back at these kinds of decisions as pivotal decisions,” Newsom said.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.