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Newsom Says ‘New Normal’ on the Horizon as Retail Restrictions Are Eased

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As California moves into the next phase of easing shelter-in-place restrictions, Gov. Gavin Newsom met with a small business owner in Sacramento during his daily briefing on Tuesday. The governor said she is one of many that will be able to reopen their store — with limitations — starting Friday.

On Monday, Newsom announced that the state would begin slowly moving into stage two of the stay-at-home order, allowing retail businesses to gradually open. How California residents go about this next phase will determine if the state has to toggle back on easing restrictions or can continue to move forward.

“We’re not going back to normal. It’s back to new normal with adaptations and modifications until we get to immunity, until we get to a vaccine,” Newsom said.

In good news, the governor said the number of new positive cases has remained steady over the past several days, despite a significant increase in the number of tests. Additionally, tens of millions of new masks have been coming into the state on a weekly basis, which Newsom called "foundational" for moving into the next stage.

California has distributed 14.2 million surgical masks since the beginning of the pandemic, but the state has acquired 19.3 million masks over the past few days. Newsom hopes to begin distributing these masks to grocery, retail and transit workers.

“I can assure you, in all of these months, we have never had so many procedure masks, surgical masks, in our possession, now able to be distributed all across the state of California,” Newsom said.

— Audrey Garces (@AudreyGarces)

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