Governor Newsom Eases Requirements on Counties to be Eligible to Reopen

Today, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced modifications to the state’s COVID-19 criteria for a county to be eligible to reopen. Recognizing that only 24 of the state’s 58 counties had satisfied the current “variance” criteria allowing a county to reopen, Governor Newsom updated the COVID-19 case metrics criteria to make them marginally less restrictive.

A county is now eligible to apply for a variance to reopen if it has had stable hospitalization rates of COVID-19 individuals on a seven-day average with a daily percentage change of less than 5% OR if it has had no more than 20 COVID-19 hospitalizations on any single day in the past 14 days. Alternatively, a county may apply to reopen if it has had fewer than 25 new cases per 100,000 residents in the past 14 days OR less than 8% of its tested population is testing positive in the past seven days.

These criteria replace the more restrictive previous targets limiting infections to no more than one COVID-19 case per 10,000 in the previous 14 days and requiring no COVID-19 deaths in the previous 14 days.

Required criteria on testing capacity, hospitalization surge capacity and contact tracing remain the same and are addressed in this update.