California Gov. Gavin Newsom admitted that his administration made some mistakes in the first reopening of his state, reflecting on the early summer spikes in COVID-19 cases that shortly after restrictions were loosened.
California, which has recorded more than 3.5 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 50,000 deaths, has been home to some of the strictest lockdowns in the country as officials tried to curb the spread of the contagion.
Last year, Newsom’s initial lockdown blanketed the country’s third-largest state for about seven weeks before the Democratic governor began loosening restrictions, giving counties the green light to restart their day-to-day activities. Looking back now, Newsom said he should have done more to caution people about their behavior as restrictions got lifted.
“We were communicating with counties and businesses and sectors and industries, not with the public, what that modification meant and what it didn’t mean,” Newsom told the Associated Press. “And in hindsight, clearly, we could have done a much better job by informing the public what those modifications meant.”
Upon seeing the spikes in cases that happened shortly after the first reopening, Newsom maneuvered the state’s response to a more regionalized approach.
California is now in the midst of working on a broader reopening plan as states begin loosening their lockdowns as vaccine distribution ramps up.
Newsom said he is also preparing to expand the list of people eligible for vaccinations and defended his criticism of the recall campaign against him after he claimed the effort was led by “a partisan, Republican coalition of national Republicans, anti-vaxxers, Q-Anon conspiracy theorists and anti-immigrant Trump supporters.”
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“I thought it was right that we highlighted that,” Newsom said.
Wednesday marked the deadline for recall organizers to turn in signatures to county elections officials. Organizers said they collected more than 2 million signatures, which is more than the requisite amount to place the proposal on the ballot, though the signatures still must be verified by the secretary of state’s office.
