GOVERNOR GAVIN NEWSOM ORDERS STATEWIDE SHELTER IN PLACE

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In response to projections that over half the state’s population could contract the coronavirus over the coming months, Governor Gavin Newsom took dramatic action Thursday evening, ordering a statewide shelter in place for the approximately 40 million residents of California.

The state order is effective immediately, and does not have a set ending date. The governor said the course of the epidemic would be evaluated, and the shelter in place would be adjusted accordingly.

Currently many counties in Northern and Central California have ordered shelter in place. The governor’s order would extend that to the entire state.

California along with Washington and New York, each with large coronavirus clusters, have been the most aggressive of the states in instituting broad restrictions on gatherings and in closing businesses. Each has seen a rapid rise in the number of cases of coronavirus in the past week.

The shelter in place order issued by Newsom puts California ahead of all other states in taking drastic action to limit the spread of the coronavirus in the coming days. The action stops just short of a complete lockdown, such as were ordered in parts of China and Italy in the past few weeks as the coronavirus death toll mounted in those countries.

The order was issued after modeling projections estimated that without drastic steps, 25.5 million Californians could be infected with the coronavirus in the coming weeks.