Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said the city has “never been fully closed” and will “never be completely opened” until there is a cure for COVID-19.
Garcetti made the remarks Wednesday on Good Morning America, a day after officials in the city said stay-at-home restrictions would likely continue until the end of July.
“We’re not moving beyond COVID-19; we’re learning to live with it,” Garcetti said. “It’s important not to overreact, but it’s important to take this serious because it is as dangerous today as it was the first day that it arrived in our cities and in our country.”
“This past weekend, we opened up our trails. We have retail for curbside pickup. We’ll see that expanded and even some active recreation on our beaches this coming weekend. Those are important,” Garcetti said. “And we’ve never been fully closed. We’ll never be completely open until we have a cure.”
During a Tuesday board of supervisors meeting, Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said that officials expect restrictions to continue into the summer. She said, “Our hope is that by using the data, we’d be able to slowly lift restrictions over the next three months.”
Garcetti addressed Ferrer’s remarks during the interview, saying, “There’s no so-called open state or open country that doesn’t continue to have health orders telling us to cover our faces, physically distance, and to tell people that you’re safest working from and staying at home. That’s all that the county health director was saying, and we can’t expect that to disappear in a matter of weeks or even a few months.”
Los Angeles County has had more than 33,000 cases of the coronavirus and at least 1,600 deaths, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University.
“We all have to all recognize that we’re not moving beyond COVID-19, we’re learning to live with it,” @MayorOfLA Eric Garcetti weighs in on latest stay-at-home orders. https://t.co/oCtlM8IWmi pic.twitter.com/Cyr5MlBbvM
— Good Morning America (@GMA) May 13, 2020
