California Stays Home

With limited ICU beds available and COVID-19 cases surging throughout the state of California, Governor Gavin Newsom announced a new regional stay-at-home order for the state on December 3, 2020. The regional stay-at-home order has divided the state up into 5 regions which are Northern California, Greater Sacramento, Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley, and Southern California. Even though the regional stay-at-home order is imposed on each region individually all regions in California are expected to enter a stay-at-home order by mid-December with Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley to be required to enter the stay-at-home order at 11:59pm on December 6, and most Bay Area counties voluntarily entering the order on the same day at the same time.

The stay-at-home order with affect about 85% of the population in the state but will have biggest effect on the businesses operating in these regions and soon the entire state. The industry that is expected to be hurt the most by this stay-at-home order is the restaurant industry. Under the order restaurants can only operate for takeout.

Sacramento waitress Susanna Lipovitch said, “I expect my hours to be cut when Sacramento is issued the order, and my jobs will probably change to just boxing orders and working the cash register.”

Since the March stay-at-home order was lifted, California restaurants could operate with outdoor dining, tables six feet apart, and in some areas indoor dining with limited capacity. This is expected to further hurt the already struggling industry due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tourism and lodging industry are also expected to take a big hit from the regional stay-at-home order. Under the order hotels are only allowed to be open if they support critical infrastructure. While amusement parks, museums, aquariums, zoos, wineries, and casinos must close. This many of these tourist attractions have been closed since March meaning that this order will affect them very limited.

The last major industry expected to take a hit from the regional stay-at-home order but not as badly as the restaurant, tourism, or lodging industries is the retail industry. Retail stores can remain open under the order but must drop their capacity to 20%. The order also wants no eating or drinking in the store meaning you can’t buy a Starbucks from the Target Starbucks and drink it while shopping. Shopping centers, malls, and outlet malls can also remain open with 20% capacity and food courts being takeout only.

With these new stay-at-home orders in place these businesses can expect to be under these new restrictions, in the regions currently going into a stay-at-home order until December 28 at the soonest. With ICU beds at under 15% in these regions they need to get that number up above 15% if they wish to reopen on that date. With this regional stay-at-home order and the curfew that was put in place on November 14th, California hopes that these measures will stop the surge in coronavirus cases throughout the state and open more ICU beds in the state.