With California’s date to fully reopen planned for June 15, keeping the pace of vaccinations going and Covid variants at bay will be necessary in order to meet that timeframe.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement more than two months ahead of the target date was welcome news, but caught some unaware after months of stay-at-home orders and business restrictions.
Kevin Klowden, executive director of the Milken Institute’s California Center, told the Northern California Record the advance notice will give people time to get vaccinated and businesses time to prepare and rehire workers.
“It’s partly to deal with people’s impatience, but also because of a need for predictability,” Klowden said. “One of the real complaints raised multiple times with the tier system was that closing and reopening happened too quickly, with unclear guidelines.”
The June 15 date could change if Covid cases spike or vaccines run low.
“The major thing that needs to happen first and foremost is the California infection rate needs to stay down,” Klowden said. “The real issue is that we’ve got multiple variations of the virus going around.”
Additional strains have recently been found in Northern California, KCRA reported.
The pause in the Johnson & Johnson vaccine isn’t expected to hinder California’s vaccination rate, Klowden said.
“Because the J&J vaccine was only a small portion of the total number of vaccines that were going out,” Klowden said. “And because the opening date is as much driven by the infection/case/hospitalization rate, not just the vaccines, and if you look at rate of vaccinations in California, it’s stayed steady.”
Business leaders characterized the reopening news as a welcome step toward certainty, though still conditioned on many factors.
“For more than a year, the California business community has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to create a safe and healthy space for employees and customers while enduring reductions in customers and sales and, in many cases, unpredictable closures and re-openings,” Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable said. “The business community will continue to aggressively work to stop the spread and encourage vaccinations, which are necessary steps to reopen the economy and protect our communities.”
The state still needs to gauge the potential for case escalation as more people travel in from other states and countries, Klowden said.
“The most important thing to know is ensuring everyone in the family gets vaccinated, because kids can still transmit the virus even if asymptomatic, so getting everyone vaccinated is incredibly important,” Klowden said.
Advancing economic recovery will depend not only on government mandates, but on people’s comfort level with returning to pre-pandemic activities.
“It’s a matter of people’s reluctance, their willingness to expose themselves,” Klowden said. “Some people could come back quickly; some it could take months or even a year of two.”