The decision to end the sweeping regional measures - which included blanket bans on gatherings and “non-essential” activities, and closed outdoor dining and personal care businesses such as hair salons - is based on forecasts for intensive care unit capacities improving across all California regions. “Seven weeks ago, our hospitals and front-line medical workers were stretched to their limits, but Californians heard the urgent message to stay home when possible and our surge after the December holidays did not overwhelm the health care system to the degree we had feared.” “California is slowly starting to emerge from the most dangerous surge of this pandemic yet, which is the light at the end of the tunnel we’ve been hoping for,” the state’s health secretary Mark Ghaly wrote in a statement. The “stay-at-home” measures were ordered for some 20 million people in southern and central California since December 3, but public health director Tomas Aragon said the state was now “turning a critical corner.” The western state has suffered one of the nation’s worst winter Covid spikes, with hospital intensive care units overwhelmed, ambulances backed up for hours at a time, and cases more than doubling since December to over three million. California lifted blanket “stay-at-home” orders across the US state Monday, paving the way for activities including outdoor dining to return even in worst-hit regions as the pandemic’s strain on hospitals begins to ease.

California lockdown 2021