Newsom ‘likely’ to extend stay-at-home order in Stanislaus and other Valley counties
The regional stay-at-home order affecting businesses and others in the San Joaquin Valley, including Stanislaus County, is likely to extend beyond the original order, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday.
Regional stay-at-home orders are in place for 98% of the state’s residents, Newsom noted. The San Joaquin Valley and Southern California regions each have 0% ICU capacity to take the sickest patients, Newsom said .
The Valley order is set to expire on Dec. 28 and Southern California’s sunsets on Dec. 30. Newsom was not specific about how much longer the order could last.
“We are likely — it’s pretty self-evident — going to need to extend those dates,” Newsom said.
The San Joaquin Valley region as it pertains to the COVID-19 orders includes Stanislaus, San Joaquin, Merced, Calaveras, Kern, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, San Benito, Tulare, and Tuolumne counties.
Stanislaus has seen a surge in people testing positive for the virus and in those being hospitalized with it, with 315 people with confirmed coronavirus cases in the five county hospitals on Sunday. The number of available staffed intensive care unit beds stood at eight.
Several factors will go into state officials’ determinations related to an extension of the stay-at-home order, according to Dr. Mark Ghaly, California’s secretary of health and human services. Factors include the number of ICU beds projected to be available on the day the order is set to be lifted, capacity left in area hospitals, the trend in the seven-day average of cases and transmission rates.
For the San Joaquin Valley, that means officials would do the calculations before the scheduled end of the order on Dec. 28. At the current rate, neither the Valley nor Southern California looks to be ready to come out from under the order, Ghaly said.
“We will only make that call when we actually do the calculations, when the time is right,” Ghaly said.
The state is experiencing record-breaking numbers in terms of how many people are in ICU beds at 3,644 — double the peak from July. That is also an increase of 63% from two weeks ago, according to state numbers.
The infection positivity rate across the state has also risen from 8.7% two weeks ago to 12% on Monday, according to state numbers. In Stanislaus County, December’s positivity rate so far is 15.52%, while November’s was 10.37%.
