NEWS: California Governor Announces Changes to COVID-19 Restrictions

We’ve been hearing a lot about California state restrictions recently.

Health and Safety Signage in front of Disneyland

A bill that would make it possible for large theme parks to reopen soon in the state has been gaining traction and, just a few days ago, California’s Governor Newsom shared that they are working to return to in-person sporting event attendance next month. This comes after a year of state guidelines that have regulated what businesses could reopen in the state, including preventing theme parks from reopening. And, as cases are trending downward in the state, Governor Newsom announced a few adjustments coming to his “Blueprint for a Safer Economy” policy.

According to Deadline, Governor Newsom announced that he will be revamping the policy to connect reopenings to vaccination administration totals. The new policy would loosen restrictions by changing the daily new COVID case rate needed to drop to the red tier (one below purple) from 7 to 10 per 100,000. The test positivity rate of 8% will remain the same. But, this change won’t take place immediately.

COVID-19 vaccination tents are set up in the north of the Toy Story parking lot at the Disneyland Resort (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The state must have distributed 2 million vaccine doses to the hardest-hit communities before the restrictions can be loosened. It is expected that they will hit this number in the next two weeks, as 1.6 million doses have already been administered to those communities. The restrictions will then change again when the state reaches 4 million doses to the hard-hit communities.

Disneyland Health and Safety Measures

This comes as Governor Newsom prioritizes areas that have been hit the hardest with the COVID-19 virus, setting aside 40% of vaccines for those locations. We’re keeping an eye as more updates are released so stay tuned!