What has changed as California moves to tiers from stay-at-home order? Here’s a refresher

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday lifted the regional stay-at-home order, releasing three vast geographic regions that combine for 90% of the state’s population from the tightest set of coronavirus-induced restrictions imposed since last spring.

The release came because of improving intensive care unit forecasts statewide. The 13-county Greater Sacramento region exited the order earlier this month; and the least populous region, Northern California, never entered the regional order because its reported ICU availability never dropped below the 15% threshold.

Those two plus the other three regions — the Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley and Southern California — are now all back to the state’s reopening “blueprint,” a color-coded tier system that bases restriction levels on counties’ COVID-19 case and test positivity metrics rather than ICU space.

All but four tiny counties accounting for 0.1% of the state’s population are in the purple tier, which is the tightest of the four tiers but not as strict as the regional stay-at-home order.

What can you do in a purple tier?

These are the key changes in the move from the stay-at-home order to the purple reopening tier, according to the California Department of Public Health.

▪ Restaurants may reopen for outdoor dining.

▪ “Personal care service” businesses including barbershops, hair salons, nail salons and more may reopen, with modifications.

▪ Retail stores’ indoor capacity limits are increased from 20% to 25% of their usual limits.

▪ Hotels and lodging are no longer required to have non-essential, out-of-state travelers stay in a mandatory quarantine period upon arrival.

▪ Outdoor campgrounds may reopen with modifications.

▪ The state’s curfew barring non-essential businesses from operating from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. has expired.

What about private gatherings?

The state’s ban on small private gatherings, though unenforceable in practice, has also been lifted. The regional stay-at-home order had instructed Californians not to meet for social gatherings of any size involving members of multiple households.

Gatherings remain discouraged, but purple-tier guidelines instruct that if they are held, they should involve no more than three separate households with masks and physical distancing, and should last two hours or less.

What’s still closed or off limits?

And the major closures that remain in place for purple-tier counties are:

▪ Restaurants may not reopen indoor dining areas, and bars that do not serve meals may not be open indoors or outdoors.

▪ Entertainment venues including movie theaters, card rooms and bowling alleys must stay closed for indoor operations.

▪ Places of worship may not hold indoor services; they may continue to hold service outdoors or virtually.

▪ Office spaces must remain closed, except for essential work that cannot be performed remotely.

What about schools?

School campuses are to remain largely closed with limited exceptions, except those that have already reopened for the academic year when the county was in a less restrictive tier.

The state’s newly released campus opening guidance say schools can apply to reopen in counties where the daily new case rate is below 25 cases per 100,000 residents, according to the state health department’s weekly tier data updates. That threshold is 3½ times higher than the cutoff of seven cases per 100,000 that separates the purple tier from the less restrictive red tier.

Individual counties may voluntarily pose more restrictive health orders than the state’s requirements, but not less restrictive ones.