California Governor issues statewide ‘Stay at Home’ order

Governor Gavin Newsom issued a statewide “stay at home” order amid coronavirus pandemic on Thursday night.

The order is for the entire state of California, nearly 40 million people, and asks for residents to stay at home and nonessential businesses to be shut down.

The order is for the entire state of California, nearly 40 million people, and asks for residents to stay at home and nonessential businesses to be shut down.

“People will self-regulate their behavior and they’ll begin to adjust and adapt as they have been like significantly. We will have social pressure to encourage people to do the right thing,” Newsom said during the press conference. Newsom also mentioned “bending the curve” multiple times, which refers to keeping a surge in case as low as possible in the near future.

The order goes into effect immediately and will go until further notice. Essential services such as gas stations, pharmacies, grocery stores and banks will remain open.

The state has some details about what is open here.  The city of Palm Springs also offered up this chart identifying critical infrastructure:

In a letter to Donald Trump sent Thursday, Newsom requested the immediate deployment of the USNS Mercy Hospital Ship to the Port of Los Angeles.  He also offered a dire prediction for the state’s population.  “In some parts of our state, our case rate is doubling every four days,” he wrote. “We project that roughly 56 percent of our population — 25.5 million people — will be infected with the virus over an eight week period.”