California on Thursday laid out a plan to manage Covid as a permanent aspect of life, anticipating future surge and new variant that may require temporary public health measures such as facemasks depending on how much the virus is disrupting economic and social activity.
The state's response will depend on how many people are hospitalized by the Covid variant and how much disease it causes.
The public health measures would be imposed if there was a specific triggering event. He said a more deadly variant might require California to focus on infections, while a less virulent strain might require a focus on hospitalizations.
In the fall and winter, California will probably experience seasonal Covid Surges, and the state will closely monitor whether those Surges are caused by new variant of concern or familiar ones. If the particular Covid strain is causing serious disruptions to hospitals and businesses, the state would impose measures such as masks.
There may need to be a time when we all wear masks so we don't overwhelm our healthcare delivery system or cripple our businesses.
The plan aims to use wastewater surveillance to detect rising viral transmission early so the state can quickly sequence new variant as they emerge and determine within 45 days if vaccines, tests and therapies are effective against the strain. The plan states that the state would quickly deploy additional testing and surge health-care staff to regions impacted by rising transmission.
California plans to have enough health-care staff to provide at least 500,000 Covid tests and 200,000 vaccines a day within two to three weeks. 75 million high-quality masks, thousands of ventilators, and 30 million over-the-counter Covid tests will be procured by the state.
Children who only recently became eligible as well as the elderly and those with compromised immune systems are some of the people who will be updated on their vaccines in California.
The universal indoor mask mandate expired on Tuesday in California. State health officials strongly encourage the vaccine recipients to wear masks indoors. People who are unvaccinated are still required to wear masks in public places.
California has a mask mandate for schools. State health officials will evaluate the situation in California at the end of the month and give a time frame for when the school mask mandate will shift to a recommendation.
The number of Covid cases in California has fallen over the past week, according to data compiled by the University. The state had a peak of more than 123,000 cases per day on January 16.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services, Covid has nearly 8,500 patients in California hospitals. That is down 22% over the past week and half of the peak levels seen in January. The state had a high of more than 23,600 hospitalized Covid patients.
CNBC's Nathan Rattner contributed to the report.
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