Corona virus Live Updates: 40 Million Californians Ordered to Stay Home

Traffic in downtown Los Angeles, on Thursday. The governor told the state’s residents to remain at home beginning on Friday.Credit...Etienne Laurent/EPA, via Shutterstock

Residents of the most populous state have effectively been told to shelter in place. The virus has killed more people in Italy than in China, and the race for a vaccine pits nationalism against the global good.   

RIGHT NOWGov. Gavin Newsom of California also banned social gatherings and ordered nonessential businesses closed.

California’s governor orders residents to “stay at home.”

America’s most populous state is ordering its residents to stay at home.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California on Thursday ordered Californians — all 40 million of them — to stay at home as much as possible in the coming weeks as the state confronts the escalating corona virus outbreak. The order represents the most drastic measure any governor has taken to control the virus, and a decision that Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, which has far more cases than in California, has resisted taking.

Mr. Newsom made the announcement from the state’s emergency operations center in Sacramento, normally a place where emergency workers coordinate responses to wildfires and earthquake, and spoke in stark terms of the risk the virus poses to the population.

Citing a model that state planners have been using, suggesting that 56 percent of Californians, or more than 25 million people, could be infected over eight weeks, Mr. Newsom said, “I think it’s time I tell you what I tell my family.”

“This is not a permanent state, this is a moment in time,” he said. “We will look back at these decisions as pivotal.”

Earlier in the week several counties in the Bay Area, plus Sacramento, issued orders that residents essentially shelter in place, although there are several exceptions — which also apply to the state order — such as going to buy groceries or picking up prescriptions.

Healthcare workers, essential municipal workers such as bus drivers and others will still be working. But most offices and retail outlets will need to close, if they haven’t already.

The new rules were the most drastic ones so far in the country for the population size covered, and follow similar crackdowns in Europe, most notably in Italy, where the death toll from the relentless virus on Thursday surpassed that of China.

Just before Mr. Newsom spoke, officials in Los Angeles County held a news conference to announce their own stay at home order, which they are calling, “safer at home.”

How the orders will be enforced is unclear, but officials said they expected residents to follow them and that there would be enormous social pressure to do so.

Reference: The New York Times