Perhaps you heard the announcement this week that President Biden plans to end the nation’s Covid public health emergency in May, signaling that the pandemic has moved into a less dire phase. California’s version is set to end even sooner. The state’s coronavirus emergency declaration will expire on Feb. 28, almost three years after it began.
It gave Gov. Gavin Newsom broad power to issue mandates intended to slow the spread of the virus, as well as to bypass certain state laws. He announced in October that he would end the emergency in February, and a spokesperson from his office confirmed on Wednesday that that’s still his plan. The sunsetting of the emergency declaration, which has been the basis for more than 500 legal and policy measures in California, reflects a shift in how state officials are approaching the pandemic, experts say.
Newsom released a statewide plan last year that calls for treating the virus as a manageable risk, as opposed to a crisis. The coronavirus is still killing about 40 people a day in California, and is infecting people at the level of a “very bad flu season,” said Dr. Timothy Brewer, an epidemiologist at U.C.L.A. But the state seems to have avoided a catastrophic winter surge, and reports of new cases have been falling in recent weeks. Three-fourths of all Californians have received at least an initial vaccination against the virus.