Governor Newsom Eases Requirements on Counties to be Eligible to Reopen
Today, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced modifications to the state’s COVID-19 criteria for a county to be eligible to reopen. Recognizing that only 24 of the state’s 58 counties had satisfied the current “variance” criteria allowing a county to reopen, Governor Newsom updated the COVID-19 case metrics criteria to make them marginally less restrictive.
A county is now eligible to apply for a variance to reopen if it has had stable hospitalization rates of COVID-19 individuals on a seven-day average with a daily percentage change of less than 5% OR if it has had no more than 20 COVID-19 hospitalizations on any single day in the past 14 days. Alternatively, a county may apply to reopen if it has had fewer than 25 new cases per 100,000 residents in the past 14 days OR less than 8% of its tested population is testing positive in the past seven days.
These criteria replace the more restrictive previous targets limiting infections to no more than one COVID-19 case per 10,000 in the previous 14 days and requiring no COVID-19 deaths in the previous 14 days.
Required criteria on testing capacity, hospitalization surge capacity and contact tracing remain the same and are addressed in this update.
Manatt will continue to closely monitor these developments, and our team is available to advise.