California to Impose Regional Stay-at-Home Order to Ease COVID Hospitalizations, Governor Says

CNBC reports that California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that the state will impose a three-week stay-at-home order on certain areas if their intensive care unit capacity slips below 15 percent. California will be divided into five regions: the Bay Area, Greater Sacramento, Northern California, San Joaquin Valley, and Southern California. "The bottom line is if we don't act now, our hospital system will be overwhelmed by COVID-19," Newsom warned. "If we don't act now, we'll continue to see a death rate climb, more lives lost." None of the five regions have so far triggered the stay-at-home order, though every area in California is expected to at some point in December. The majority of Californians currently remains under the most restrictive "widespread" tier of the state's four-tiered reopening plan, and Newsom said the latest announcement would enact the restrictions in "a much more broad, much more comprehensive way." He added that this will represent the pandemic's "final surge" as vaccines approach authorization.