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Newsom: Majority of California Counties Cleared for Limited Reopening

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The vast majority of California counties will be allowed to ease restrictions on businesses, under new guidelines unveiled by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday.

Under the new benchmarks, Newsom said that 53 of the state’s 58 counties now have the option of allowing more retailers to open, including shopping centers and dine-in eating at restaurants, along with curbside pickup and the resumption of manufacturing.

"We're moving into an important few weeks ahead of us, and we're going to start seeing a lot more activity," Newsom said.

The changes announced on Monday are the result of subtle shifts in the reopening benchmarks that the Newsom administration has required counties to reach before clearing businesses to resume.

Counties will no longer have to go two weeks without a coronavirus death under the new guidelines; instead they can move into Phase 2 of the state's reopening by hitting goals based on tests, infections and hospitalizations.

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Those include a test positivity rate of under 8% — an alternative to the previous requirement that counties maintain a specific coronavirus case count, which Newsom hinted could discourage counties from testing for the virus.

Smaller counties with few hospitalizations argued that just a few cases would push them above a separate requirement that hospitalizations not increase by 5%. Now, counties can move to reopen as long as no more than 20 people have been hospitalized with COVID-19 over the previous two weeks.

Newsom justified the changes by citing improvements in a number of metrics used to measure California’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Notably, Newsom reported that 57,000 tests were conducted in one day, a dramatic jump from the numbers the state was reporting just a week ago.

"The testing capacity is increasing significantly in the state," Newsom said.

The number of Californians hospitalized or placed into intensive care because of the coronavirus has also declined in the last two weeks.

A further relaxing of the rules, such as the opening of barbershops and the launching of live sports (albeit in empty stadiums), could be just a few weeks away, Newsom said.

— Guy Marzorati, @GuyMarzorati

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