What could California’s new coronavirus restrictions look like? Here are some clues - Pacifica Tribune

Those are some of the potential changes highlighted by epidemiologists, who cited new restrictions enacted by Santa Clara and Los Angeles counties as examples of what could be next for the state as a whole.

The vast majority of California’s nearly 40 million residents live in counties — including all but Marin in the Bay Area — that already have the tightest restrictions under the state’s tiered system for coronavirus limits because officials consider spread of the deadly illness in those regions to be “widespread.” State rules for those counties prohibit higher-risk activities, such as eating indoors at restaurants or exercising inside gyms, and require other businesses to limit their indoor capacities.

But as the winter wave of new coronavirus infections and hospitalizations grows, with Newsom warning Monday that California could run out of intensive care unit beds by the middle of this month, the state is exploring new limits above and beyond the ones it already considered its toughest.

A future state order could expand that directive to all hours: The order Los Angeles County officials announced last Friday asks residents to “stay home as much as possible” and not gather with anyone from outside their household.

The county also shut down outdoor dining, requiring restaurants to go back to the take-out only model from the spring, a step Santa Clara County has not taken.

Bibbins-Domingo said she hopes encouraging news about new coronavirus vaccines, which are expected to start going out to health care workers later this month and to the broader pubic next year, helps overcome that fatigue.

While non-essential retailers and personal service businesses such as hair salons were shut down in the spring, both Santa Clara and Los Angeles counties’ orders allow them to keep operating — at tightly limited capacities and requiring all shoppers to wear masks — through what is expected to be a crucial holiday season for many after a difficult year.

In Santa Clara County, where retailers are limited to 10 percent of their pre-pandemic capacity, that means Parvin Abdollahi can only allow one shopper at a time inside Penelope Boutique, her clothing store in the Santana Row shopping center