Amid the coronavirus pandemic, outdoor gatherings with a friend or two have replaced the indoor dinner party. Many people have spent Friday night around a backyard fire pit or in lawn chairs parked on a sidewalk, pulling their masks on and off between sips of beer.
Is this permitted under California's new stay-at-home order, now in place throughout Southern California and the Central Valley and adopted by six Bay Area jurisdictions — Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Santa Clara, San Francisco and the city of Berkeley?
The answer is no, according to the state guidelines.
Previously, the state requirement for private gatherings was to keep them outdoors and small, with people from no more than three households attending. Now, if your county or region falls under the order, "all gatherings with members of other households are prohibited," according to the state.
Here's how Santa Clara County puts it: "You may no longer gather socially (even outdoors)."
And this is what Berkeley Health Officer Dr. Lisa Hernandez said about it: "If you have a social bubble, it is now popped."
While social gatherings aren't permitted, religious worship, protests and demonstrations are allowed but only outdoors with health protocols in place.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a new regional stay-at-home order Thursday, designed to prevent local health systems from becoming overwhelmed by surging COVID-19 cases.
The new order divides the state into five regions, triggering restrictions when intensive-care-unit bed capacity falls below 15%. The tier system was based on county infection rates.
The Southern California and Central Valley regions are now under the new order and six Bay Area jurisdictions adopted it early, before ICU capacity dipped below 15%. The new shutdown rules took effect at 10 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 6, in Contra Costa, Santa Clara and San Francisco counties and the city of Berkeley; on Monday, Dec. 7, in Alameda County; and on Tuesday, Dec. 8, in Marin County.
While you can't gather with friends, Newsom encouraged residents under the order to recreate outdoors and said at a Dec. 3 press briefing that walking the dog, going on a run or walk with a partner within your household, going sledding or fishing, and taking a bike ride are all allowed in regions under the order.
"So this is really important to take care of your physical health, to take care of your mental health, to get the kind of exercise that is required to get us through this temporary moment," he said. "This is not a permanent state. This is what many had projected. We had predicted the final surge in this pandemic. There is light at the end of the tunnel. We are a few months away from truly seeing real progress with the vaccine, real distribution, real accessibility, real availability."
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