![]() ![]() In an effort to get the state’s economy going again, Newsom has also assembled a new group of economic leaders, set to give a press conference this week, and identified a number of indicators for when the state can expand the definition of an essential business, allowing more to reopen. Newsom did not address any potential privacy concerns, but did say it could create thousands of jobs and that some state staff are already being “reprioritized” to work on the program. He did not go into great detail about the app, but said it is meant to aid with “tracing efforts,” so the tracking of people infected or potentially infected by the virus. On the less visible side of things, Newsom mentioned a new program being tested called “Check In” that state officials are currently deciding which app platform, Google or Apple, to use as host. That’s not to say Newsom is taking a complacent position, but he doesn’t want to “get ahead of ourselves and make the mistake of pulling the plug too early - I don’t want to make a political decision that puts lives at risk.” That could mean no beaches all summer, no Memorial Day trips and no large Fourth of July celebrations. Newsom said the idea that mass gatherings will be allowed again in the next six months, if not more, “is not in the cards” based on the current projections of the disease. He only allowed that, if in two weeks’ time there is a “continued decline, not just a flattening” of cases of the virus, “then we can be more prescriptive on the timeline.”īut even then, many norms, those visible and not, in the state are likely to be much changed. Taking such a position, Newsom did not give a timeline as to when the state’s lockdown, which has kept almost 40 million people largely at home and closed all non-essential business in the state, might come to an end. “We’ll be toggling back and forth between less restrictive and more restrictive measures, more individual responsibility with face coverings and isolation, and more enforcement along those lines.” "The longer the lockdown is in place and stay-at-home orders are in place, then the bigger bang for our buck we're going to get from vaccination.“There’s no light switch here, it’s more like a dimmer,” Newsom said, dismissing the idea that the coronavirus measures will simply be lifted at some point. If people can hold out a bit longer, he said the start of summer could look much closer to normal. ![]() That will make a big difference if measures stay in place, according to Evans. Part of that may be due to the more contagious variants of concern, which made up more than three-quarters of the coronavirus that was found in wastewater as of May 1.īesides the variants, another factor during this third wave of the pandemic is widespread vaccinations. This time around, Graber said the rate is "stubborn" and keeps plateauing. ![]() "But when we come down," he said, "it's a very slow trailing off." When the viral load increases, it goes up quite sharply, according to Tyson Graber, a scientist on Ottawa's coronavirus wastewater monitoring program. A closed entrance to a shop in downtown Ottawa on April 26, 2021, during Ontario's stay-at-home order. ![]()
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