California to drop social distancing requirements in June

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California no longer will require social distancing and will allow full capacity for businesses when the state reopens on June 15, the state’s top health official said Friday.

“We’re at a place with this pandemic where those requirements of the past are no longer needed for the foreseeable future,” Secretary of California Health and Human Services Dr. Mark Ghaly said.

He said dramatically lower virus cases and increasing vaccinations mean it’s safe for the state to remove nearly all restrictions next month. The state of nearly 40 million people has administered nearly 35.5 million vaccine doses, he said, and more than three-quarters of residents over age 65 have received at least one dose.

“Vaccines are widely available, and we’re proud of where we are,” Ghaly said.

“Something very important happens on June 15 in California” when the state ends its color-coded four-tier system that restricts activities based on each county’s virus prevalence, he said.

Limits on how many people can be inside businesses at any one time, “which have been a hallmark” of the safety plan, will disappear, he said. “There will no longer be (physical distancing) restrictions for attendees, customers and guests in business sectors,” Ghaly said.

That won’t mean an abrupt end to wearing masks, he said, but it will mean the state will adjust its guidelines to correspond to national guidelines.

Officials already announced this week that they would wait until mid-June to follow the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s new mask guidelines that say it’s safe for fully vaccinated people to skip face coverings and social distancing in virtually all situations. The federal guidelines state that everyone should still wear masks in crowded indoor locations such as airplanes, buses, hospitals and prisons.

California’s workforce regulators are separately developing safety rules that will continue to apply to employers, Ghaly said. ...