California and other large states are loosening Covid restrictions just as scientists warn that more-contagious variants of the virus are beginning to take hold in the U.S. and the vaccine rollout struggles.
With a two-month spike in cases beginning to subside, California Governor Gavin Newsom is lifting the state’s stay-at-home order. New York, Illinois, Michigan and Massachusetts also are easing restrictions.
The shift comes as new Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are declining. Still, the new variants — including one in the U.K., another in California and a Brazilian one first identified in the U.S. on Monday in Minnesota — are setting off alarms, and may be more transmissible. The U.S. has administered only about 23.4 million vaccines for a population of about 331 million.
“We’re just asking to go backwards by easing restrictions without focusing on achieving herd immunity with vaccination,” said Sadiya Khan, an epidemiologist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “It’s very fragile.”
After almost a year of grueling lockdown, and losses both human and economic, governors and mayors are under intense pressure to balance safety and the desires of many constituents.
On Monday, Dara Maleki was just about to start returning the tents he had rented to cover the patios at his Pizza Press restaurants in Southern California when he heard that Newsom was lifting the stay-at-home order. Maleki plans to resume outdoor dining at his Anaheim-based chain as soon as he gets the word from local authorities.
“We’ve been in survival mode for so many months,” he said. “Hopefully now we can enter recovery mode.”
Newsom on Monday lifted restrictions statewide that effectively shut thousands of businesses including restaurants, bars, hair salons and movie theaters for the past two months.
The closures prompted strident protests, lawsuits and even a movement to recall Newsom, a Democrat who many believe wants to run for president. Now, those businesses will be able to reopen, subject to capacity limits and other rules. The state made the call after seeing declines in new case loads and hospitalizations.
“Today, we can start to see some real light at the end of the tunnel as it relates to case numbers,” Newsom said at a news conference.
The trajectory of Covid-19 in California, which imposed strict public-health restrictions early but continued to see rising infections, has long baffled experts. Those types of “abstinence-only” measures may have driven people to gather privately, spreading the virus, said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an infectious diseases physician.
“People are frustrated with the orders in California. I think they need to recalibrate how they’re doing this,” he said. “Anyone who has been following this pandemic should not have this misconception that lifting the stay-at-home order means the virus is over.”
Indeed, the California Department of Public Health said this month that scientists had identified a variant of the coronavirus, known as L452R, in many parts of the state.
Officials said they weren’t yet sure whether the variant was more transmissible, but noted that it had been found at large outbreaks in Santa Clara County, which county health officer Sara Cody called a “red flag.”
The rollback of regulations could complicate efforts by scientists to determine the impact the new strains are having on cases, said Rita Burke, an assistant professor of preventive clinical medicine at the University of Southern California.
The state has mass vaccine sites, but as is true everywhere, supplies of shots are scant. The emergence of new variants makes it even more important to take a “no-holds-barred approach to get the vaccine into people’s arms. Looking at those long lines at Dodger Stadium is really not how this should be going,” Adalja said.