The stay-at-home order for Southern California was extended Tuesday as COVID-19 hospitalizations continue to increase while Intensive Care Unit (ICU) capacity is not projected to improve in the region.
Southern California’s stay-at-home order was officially extended Tuesday, as public health officials are projecting that the region’s ICU capacity will remain below the required 15% needed to be released
“We’re essentially projecting that the ICU capacity is not improving in Southern California,” said California Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly in a press conference Tuesday. “Demand will continue to exceed capacity.”
While no exact timetable was given for the length of the stay-at-home order’s extension, Ghaly explained that health officials will reassess their four-week projections daily, and that the region would be released from the order once the projections showed ICU capacity exceeding or equal to 15%.
The Southern California region includes Imperial, Inyo, Los Angeles, Mono, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.
COVID-19 ICU hospitalizations across the state have increased by roughly 36.5% over the past two weeks, according to Ghaly.
“This is a tremendous amount of work for these hospital systems,” Ghaly said in a press conference Tuesday.
The extension comes a day after Governor Gavin Newsom announced that the stay-at-home order for the Southern California region was “likely” to be extended.
“It is clear and understandable that it is likely that that order will be extended,” Newsom said at the time.
See Related: State Stay-At-Home Order To Be Extended In Southern California Tuesday
Monday marked three weeks since the regional stay-at-home order was put in place. After being implemented, the order was set to be lifted when the region’s projected ICU capacity meets or exceeds 15 percent. However, ICU capacity in the region remained at 0.0% as of Monday.
In addition to examining current data, state health officials project what ICU capacity may look like in each region four weeks into the future.
When officials first began reporting ICU capacity on Dec. 3, the Southern California ICU capacity was about 20%, dropping below the 15% threshold a few days later, prompting the state’s stay-at-home order.
ICU capacity within the Southern California region has remained at 0.0% for nearly two weeks after first hitting that figure on Dec. 17.
Three weeks after the activation of the stay-at-home order, Los Angeles County has reported a record-high number of cases, with over 100,000 new cases reported in just eight days.
During a virtual press briefing held on Dec. 21, Newsom said that it was “very likely we’re going to have to extend that three-week stay-at-home order.”
Under the stay-at-home order, residents are not able to gather and salons, breweries, wineries and indoor/outdoor restaurant dining have to continue to stay closed. Takeout at restaurants is allowed.
The order prohibits private gatherings of any size, closes sector operations except for critical infrastructure and retail, and requires 100 percent masking and physical distancing in all others, according to the governor’s office.
Outdoor and indoor services for places of worship are allowed thanks to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, as well as outdoor protests.
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