OAKLAND — California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the nation's most populous state could allow its professional sports teams to resume in June — without fans — in a possible boost to leagues anxious to salvage their seasons.
Games would lack spectators and have “very prescriptive conditions.” In the preceding months, Newsom has been wary of major sporting events functioning as hubs for transmission and indicated that fans would not return until therapeutics are developed for Covid-19.
Newsom said he has been in touch with representatives of every major sports league, and he noted that even without fans teams would need to be demonstrably “protecting not only the players but their support staff.”
Major League Baseball has floated a proposal to start a compressed 2020 season without fans in attendance. The National Basketball Association, National Hockey League and Major League Soccer also have discussed ways to resume their seasons, which abruptly came to a halt in March.
California has five MLB teams, four NBA squads and three NHL clubs, making it an instrumental piece to jump-starting leagues. But it was a wild card in sports reopening as an early epicenter that has been among the nation's most cautious in allowing activities to resume.
Meanwhile, Newsom said the state is prepared to allow roughly 53 of 58 counties to enter the next phase of reopening, which include restaurant dining and in-store shopping with social distancing recommendations. That's part of relaxed regional reopening standards due to improving coronavirus trend lines in the state.
The governor said relief could also come to reeling cosmeticians and shaggy-headed residents in the weeks ahead if the trend lines of declining cases hold.
His reopening framework put cosmetology services in a later phase, after manufacturing and curbside retail, but Newsom said encouraging numbers could accelerate the process.Churches and other religious institutions could also start welcoming back the faithful for in-person services in the coming weeks, Newsom said, if trend lines hold. Defiant religious leaders have opened their doors and sued Newsom for halting such services.
Under the new regional guidelines, counties would need a test positivity rate of less than 8 percent or a rate of 25 cases per 100,000 residents or less. In addition, counties must see hospitalization rate increases of under 5 percent or no more than 20 hospitalizations in 14 days. They will not have to meet a prior benchmark of no recent deaths.
Newsom said the state would account for “hot spots within counties” like skilled-nursing facilities that are often viral epicenters driving up counties’ overall numbers.
Some local governments had protested that the prior framework, with requirements that included no deaths in the past 14 days, was prohibitively difficult to meet. Newsom’s more permissive guidelines, which include either-or benchmarks that seek to accommodate differences between large and small counties, mollified some of those critics.
“The Governor’s original criteria provided no hope to millions of Californians,” Assemblyman Jordan Cunningham (R-Templeton), who has pushed to open his county earlier, said in a statement, but “today is a day of hope and renewal.”
The governor did not name the five counties that would remain ineligible for regional reopening, but said he believes Los Angeles, where infections have persisted, will be more cautious.
“We are empowering our local health directors and county officials,” Newsom said, noting that areas with more dire outbreaks can retain tougher controls.