The inner mass is set to return to Los Angeles County, with health officials confirming Thursday that it will allow restaurants to receive customers back into their limited-capacity living rooms as the county moves to the “red” level of economic reopening of four levels of the plan state.
The county is expected to move to the “red” level on Monday.
Although the state’s “Plan for a Safer Economy” allows indoor dining at the “red” level, individual counties are allowed to impose stricter restrictions. Los Angeles County public health officials have repeatedly warned of the dangers of spreading COVID-19 to restaurants, raising questions about whether to approve meals indoors as the county moves from the most restrictive “purple” level.
The director of public health, Barbara Ferrer, referred twice this week to a new federal study that linked mass in person to the increase in COVID cases and deaths.
But the county on Thursday launched plans to reopen the “red” level and includes indoor meals at the state-authorized capacity of 25%. The county will require restaurants to have a distance of 8 meters between all meals, which will be limited to a maximum of six people in the same household.
The rules also provide for the ventilation to be increased “as far as possible”.
Restaurant servers are already required to wear a face mask and a face shield. With the new rules, the Department of Public Health “strongly recommends” that employees update their face coverings, using N95 or KN95 top-level masks, or a combination of double masking and a face shield.
Health officials also strongly recommend that all employees be informed and given the chance to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Food service workers are already eligible to receive photos.
The rules for other enterprises once the county enters the “red” level are largely in line with state guidelines:
- museums, zoos and aquariums can be opened indoors at 25% capacity
- fitness rooms and fitness centers can be opened indoors at a capacity of 10%, with masking required
- cinemas can be opened at a capacity of 25% with reserved seats to provide a distance of at least 6 meters between owners
- retail and personal care can increase indoor capacity by 50%
- the indoor shopping centers can be reopened by 50%, the common areas remaining closed, but the food grounds can be opened with a capacity of 25% and respecting the other requirements for indoor restaurants.
The move to the “red” level will also allow the reopening of theme parks from April 1 – including Disneyland in Orange County and Universal Studios Hollywood in Los Angeles County – at 15% capacity, with only visitors in the state.
The rules also allow the resumption of activities at higher education institutes and the reopening of in-person training for students in grades 7-12. Private indoor meetings are also allowed for people from up to three different households, with masking and physical distance. People who are vaccinated can gather in small groups indoors without masking or distancing.
County health officials said they anticipate the official entry at the “red” level between midnight, Monday morning and next Wednesday. The exact time will depend on when the state meets a threshold announced by Governor Gavin Newsom to administer 2 million doses of COVID vaccine to the state’s lowest-income communities.
Newsom said this week that the state will reach this threshold by Friday. On Thursday morning, the state administered 1,971,784 doses of vaccine to those low-income communities. Ferrer said earlier that he expects the county to officially advance to the “red” level 48 hours after the state meets the vaccination threshold.
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According to the latest Newsom guidelines, when the state reaches the 2 million vaccination stage in low-income communities, counties will be able to get out of the most restrictive “purple” level of the plan when the average rate of new COVIDs daily- 19 infections reach 10 per 100,000 inhabitants – a lower standard than the current 7 per 100,000 inhabitants.
Under the new guidelines, Los Angeles and Orange counties will immediately qualify for the less restrictive “red” level, as both have been below the 10 per 100,000 standard for two weeks. 5.2 per 100,000 population, while Orange County is 6 per 100,000.
The idea behind the 2 million dose threshold is to ensure that vaccines are distributed fairly throughout the state, ensuring that low-income communities that have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic are not overlooked. in the vaccination effort. Newsom ordered that 40% of the state’s vaccine supply be allocated to ensure fairness in the distribution process.
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Ferrer warned the county’s Supervisory Board on Tuesday that while the number of cases and the county’s positive test rate have plummeted in recent weeks, things could easily get worse if residents become lax about infection control measures.
“This is the month I would say – March, early April – when we have to be extraordinarily careful,” she said. “Because I’ve been here before. I’ve been here with reopenings. I was here traveling on Thanksgiving and Christmas. We’ve seen what happens around the holidays if we’re not really careful. … We need to keep everyone alive right now so they can be vaccinated and stay alive. So this would be a time for extreme caution. “
It specifically indicated the spread of virus variants that cause COVID-19, which can spread more easily from person to person. Ferrer said the variant first identified in the UK has increased its coverage in Los Angeles County and is now believed to be responsible for 10% of all COVID cases in the county.
“Increasingly, there is also concern about a fourth global wave of COVID-19, as cases began to rise in the last week of February, after six weeks of decline, especially in Europe,” she said.
On Thursday, the county reported another 101 COVID-19 deaths, although three of those deaths were actually announced Wednesday by health officials in Long Beach. The new deaths raised the death toll at the county level in the entire pandemic to 22,304.
Another 1,378 cases were announced by the county. The new cases brought the total of the cumulative pandemic to 1,208,024.
According to state figures, there were 1,015 people hospitalized in the county due to COVID since Thursday, with 287 people in intensive care.