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Gov. Newsom said California is ready to move cautiously into the next phase of reopening from the coronavirus pandemic.
The state is experiencing a rapidly dropping case load and positive test rate. 2,676 new cases were reported on Monday while the 14-day positivity rate dropped to 4.3%.
"If those appear to be more promising numbers, it’s because they are," the governor said Tuesday.
In the Bay Area, this means Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties can drop from the state’s most restrictive purple risk level down to red, along with Amador, Orange and Placer counties.
"We have new counties moving forward into new tiers which provide more activities and more opportunity to get us closer to normalcy," Gov. Newsom said.
Those activities include indoor restaurant dining, religious services, food courts, gyms and movie theaters with safety measures in place and reduced capacity.
California’s R0 number has also dropped to its lowest level since the pandemic began and is less than one, which means that on average each person who contract the virus is infecting less than one person.
But Newsom says despite dropping rates, people should not let their guards down otherwise the state will be back where it was in May, when reopenings led to a summer surge.
"People must wear face coverings. People must practice the kind of social distancing that mitigates the spread and transmission of this disease," he said.
At the same press conference, Gov. Newsom preached the same level of caution when it comes to wildfires, despite the Bay Area’s fires nearing full containment.
"With wind events that we’re experiencing currently and what we anticipate over the next coming days, we have to be mindful that even with high containment numbers those fires are anything but behind us," the governor said.
Wildfires have scorched 2.3 million acres so far this year. At the same point last year, just 118,000 acres had burned.
Carelessness, said Gov. Newsom, is exactly how a gender reveal party sparked a new wildfire over the holiday weekend that forced people to evacuate.
"It’s a reminder that the vast majority of fires that we experience on an annual basis come from individuals making bad decisions or by simple neglect and accidents."