When officials last summer designed the four-level yellow-to-purple system that California now uses to decide whether people can dine indoors, go to the movies, or get together with friends, they didn’t have a green level – an acknowledgment that a return to normalcy after the pandemic was far away. Now Gavin Newsom’s government is preparing to add one.
“The odds of hitting that green layer are probably sooner than some of us thought when we looked at summer and fall,” said Dr. Mark Ghaly, California’s health secretary, Thursday.
State officials rely on a complicated formula, including virus spread, to determine which activities are restricted in each province.
But a green label does not mean “go” for all things. Ghaly said such a label would still mean wearing masks and staying physically aloof. He declined in an interview to provide more details on what restrictions would be enforced or to provide a threshold of vaccinations that the state hopes to meet to allow for such a green light.
Earlier Thursday, Dr. Tomas Aragón, director of the state of public health, said that California could achieve herd immunity when about 75% of the population is vaccinated, although that could change as the virus mutates.
That officials are optimistic enough to publicly discuss a green low puts California in a dramatically different place than it was a few weeks ago during the state’s worst wave. Now the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths are declining and vaccinations are on the rise.
Thursday, Ghaly and other officials, including Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, the surgeon general, publicly uses the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at locations in Los Angeles and Oakland to promote its safety and efficacy. The one-short J&J vaccine recently received emergency use approval from the federal government.
The supply of the single-shot vaccine in California is limited for now, but officials are eager to build confidence in it, especially in black and Latino communities. The state recently said counties could open more quickly if more people in vulnerable neighborhoods are vaccinated.
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The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines both require two injections, while J&J only requires one dose. While public health officials say it provides strong immunity, some people have been hesitant, worried it isn’t as protective as the others.
“The thing that came to mind when that vaccine got into my arm was hug my mom again. And I think that’s something too many Californians have been without since this pandemic started,” said Burke Harris, who is Black.
Cornelia Stevens was one of several dozen residents who queued at the Los Angeles site. As a member of the California National Guard, she received an email Wednesday evening saying that her military arm was eligible for the vaccine.
“I waited my turn. I didn’t think my time would come so soon,” says Stevens, 50.
Under the new reopening plan, counties can more easily move from the most restrictive purple level to the lower red level when 2 million doses of vaccine reach the residents of California’s most disadvantaged zip codes. Once 4 million doses have been administered in those districts, it will be easier to switch to orange.
When officials established the system in August, Newsom said it was too early to anticipate a green level that would indicate “go back to the way things were.” The Democratic governor said on Wednesday that officials have been working on a green layer for months “in anticipation of this bright light at the end of this tunnel.”
Nearly half of the state’s 58 counties have come out of the strictest restrictions, and major counties such as Los Angeles and Orange are expected to do so soon, allowing for limited indoor dining and the reopening of movie theaters and gyms. LA County, the state’s most populous country with a population of 10 million, said it expects to qualify for the red level between Monday and Wednesday next week.
Also on Thursday, the state announced new rules for bars and breweries, which are largely closed if they don’t serve food. Starting Saturday, breweries and distilleries that don’t serve food can open outside in the purple and red tiers. State guidelines require customers to have a reservation at both, as well as wineries, and limit their stay to 90 minutes and that the service must end at 8 p.m. Bars that don’t serve food cannot open until the orange layer.
The state has reason to be cautiously optimistic, said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, chair of the division of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco. But she fears the state’s plan to speed up reopening is “too aggressive”.
An estimated 4.4 million people with certain serious, high-risk medical conditions or disabilities will be eligible for the vaccine on Monday. They will not be required to provide documentation, but will be asked to sign a self-declaration that they meet the criteria, the state’s public health department announced Thursday.
People who work or stay in municipal places, such as detention centers, prisons and homeless shelters, will also be newly eligible, as will public transport workers and airport workers for commercial airlines, the state also announced.
That extra eligibility could cause logjams if supply remains limited, Bibbins-Domingo said. At the same time, California must focus on vaccinating underprivileged neighborhoods to reduce the likelihood of future outbreaks, she said.
“I’m afraid that the real forward-thinking, hard-working look to get to the opening with thresholds that are a little bit easier to pass, will honestly not quite play out the way we all would like,” she said.
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