The morning of, Saturday, December 5, the State announced that the Southern California Region, of which Long Beach is a part, is now at 13.1%, surpassing the threshold.
Recently, Long Beach has seen alarming spikes in COVID-19 cases and local and area hospitalizations. As of yesterday, the average daily cases had increased by 318% compared with November 1 and area hospitalizations have increased by 400%.
City data, Health Orders and testing information continue to be available on the City’s COVID-19 website.
The City will be updating the local Health Order by tonight to align with the new requirements of the State Stay at Home Order.
As noted in a City statement earlier this week, the new Order will impact several sectors with temporary closures or capacity limits in order to limit the spread of the virus on a regional basis. The City is working with State partners to identify impacted sectors and their corresponding requirements. These will be defined in the new local Order.
Under Newsom’s December 3 plan, the state was split into 5 different sectors to monitor ICU bed capacities. When regions fall below 15% ICU capacity, that region is to implement a new stay-at-home order which will span at least three weeks.
The order does not take effect until Saturday at 12:59pm and local officials will have 24 hours to carry out the restrictions.
While the stay-at-home order is put in place, all the following businesses have to close:
- Indoor and outdoor dining
- Personal care services
- Hair salons and barbershops
- Museums, zoos and aquariums
- Playgrounds
- Bars, breweries, wineries and distilleries
- Family entertainment centers
Schools who received a waiver to stay open prior may remain open and retail stores will be allowed to stay in operation at 20% capacity.
Motels and lodging will remain open only to accommodate for essential workers.
Gov. Newsom announced the plan Thursday as an “emergency brake” to curb the recent surge in COVID-19 cases in California.
He also encouraged residents to avoid non-essential travel throughout the city.
The city recognized that this is a hard time on many financially, Governor Newsom announced a new financial hotline for people in need of support. Additional resources for businesses are available here and Long Beach-based businesses can seek help by calling 562-570-4BIZ (4279)
For more information about COVID-19 visit longbeach.gov or call (562) 572-INFO (4636) .
