Gavin Newsom warns of a winter COVID surge as California’s positive test rate ticks up
Californians hoping to ditch their masks should prepare to be disappointed, Gov. Gavin Newsom suggested Tuesday when he told attendees at an economic conference in Monterey that a winter COVID-19 surge is coming to the Golden State.
“I know you’re sitting here with masks and going, ‘Why the hell I do I still have this mask on?’” Newsom said at the California Forward conference in Monterey. “For good reason.”
California’s COVID rates have started to tick up after months of decline. In the most recent week for which data is available, 2.3% of COVID-19 test came back positive. That’s far below the pandemic-high of more than 17% during last winter’s surge, but Newsom says his administration is bracing for a grim few months, including preparing to bring in hospital staff from out of state.
The state is still gripped by drought and a shipping crisis, but Newsom says the winter surge is his “biggest anxiety.” Other states and countries with colder weather are already in trouble, Newsom said, pointing to escalating cases in the European Union and dwindling hospital capacity in Colorado.
California, he warned, is next.
“We’ll get through it,” he said. “But it’s going to require all of us.”
To quell the coming wave of coronavirus cases, Newsom said more people need to get vaccinated, either for the first time or with a booster. The federal government recently approved boosters for people over 65, adults with underlying conditions or in high-risk settings and anyone who received the Johnson and Johnson vaccine.
In California, nearly 74% of people over age 12 are fully vaccinated. Another nearly 8% of people over 12 are partially vaccinated. More than 3.4 million booster shots have been administered in the state. Those numbers put California ahead of most other states, but Newsom says many more people still need to get vaccinated to stave off a surge.
Newsom may have undercut his own message in the last week by staying out of the public eye and canceling a trip to Glasgow, citing only vague “family obligations.”
As his office deflected requests from reporters for more specifics, rumors proliferated online that Newsom was hiding from public view after having a bad reaction to the vaccine booster he received at the end of October. Newsom broke his silence Tuesday, saying he had canceled the trip and kept a low profile to spend time with his children, who had staged an “intervention” after more than a year of back-to-back crises had kept their dad occupied.
Newsom sought to tamp down the rumors with his appearance at the conference, where he told attendees he’d had no side-effects from the booster shot and urged Californians to get theirs, too.
“We’ve already started see hospitalizations go back up,” he said, referencing California’s growing number of COVID-19 patients. “That’s why I cannot impress you more: Get that booster shot. It’s safe. It will save your life.”
This story was originally published November 9, 2021 at 5:32 PM with the headline "Gavin Newsom warns of a winter COVID surge as California’s positive test rate ticks up."