California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that “drastic actions” such as a new stay-at-home order might be necessary to slow the spread of coronavirus in the state.
Newsom said that the state had reached a “tipping point,” and that with the continued increase in hospitalizations due to the disease, the state could run out of hospital beds by Christmas.
The Los Angeles Times reported:
Of particular concern is the state’s intensive care capacity. Currently, about 75% of the state’s 7,733 ICU beds are occupied — with 1,812 of them filled by coronavirus patients.
Unless things change, the state could exhaust its existing ICU capacity by mid-December, according to projections Newsom presented.
“If these trends continue, we’re going to have to take much more dramatic — arguably drastic — actions,” he said during a briefing.
Those include “the potential for a stay-at-home order” for areas in the strictest purple tier of California’s coronavirus reopening road map, he said. Of the state’s 58 counties, 51 are in the purple tier.
The state’s “purple tier” counties are already under a month-long, 10 p.m.-to-5 a.m. curfew.
State and local officials are particularly worried about coronavirus spikes over the holidays. In Los Angeles County, officials have prohibited outdoor dining at restaurants and imposed new restrictions on business capacity.
In more positive news, Newsom tweeted that California will receive 327,000 doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine by mid-December.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.