By TREVIN BRANDT
Staff Writer
On March 5th 2021, the infamous California Governor Gavin Newsom shifted his Coronavirus reopening guidelines. They now heavily favor reopenings of sporting events, theme parks, and other large-gathering activities.
Previously, these events could only take place in counties in the least restrictive tier, yellow, which is very difficult to get to. As of now, only one county in California is in the yellow tier. The new guidelines allow theme parks and sporting events to reopen in the second most restrictive tier, red, at limited capacity. Theme parks are only allowed to have 15% capacity and sporting events, only 20%. The percentages go up as the tiers become less restrictive. Even in the yellow tier, these events are restricted to California residents only. This is most likely to prohibit a large number of out of state visitors from states like Texas, which have abolished their COVID regulations completely, to spread the virus by visiting these events. Counties with sporting events and theme parks such as LA county, Orange county, San Diego county, and San Francisco county are all currently in the purple tier (with the exception of San Francisco, which is in the red tier). All of these counties are on the verge of entering the red tier as soon as next week. This means that theme parks, baseball stadiums, and live performance events could begin as soon as April 1st when these guidelines go into effect.
Disneyland has announced that they will reopen in late April. MLB plans to open to sports fans at the start of the spring season. Magic Mountain previously announced plans to reopen in May, however it is likely that they will reopen sooner in the wake of these guidelines. Universal Studios and Knotts Berry Farm have not formally announced a reopening, however they are expected to reopen sometime in April.
Gavin Newsom cites California’s high vaccination rates as why he decided to change the guidelines. He says that things are eventually going to meet the numbers required for these events to reopen, so they might as well open now. This contradicts what Newsom said only a couple of months ago. He was determined to stay “stubborn” about it and wanted to wait for the numbers to meet the vaccination efforts. Many have speculated that this change of guidelines is in response to the recall effort which has already gained more than enough signatures required to recall him.
There have also been talks of Gavin Newsom making it easier to enter the red tier. Currently, if there are at most 7 new cases of COVID per 100,000 people, the county is in the red tier. Rumors have speculated that they will raise this number to 10, which would bring many counties into the red tier.