Regional Stay at Home order includes Inyo County

The California Department of Public Health on Saturday issued a Regional Stay At Home order for the Southern Region, which includes Inyo County. The order was triggered when the region’s hospital intensive care unit capacity fell below 15% to less than 13% of ICU bed availability in the region.

The Stay At Home order remains in effect for a minimum of three weeks. The county’s statement noted that limited ICU capacity can result in local hospitals not being able to transfer critical care patients, including traumatic brain injuries, stroke victims and cardiac care patients, among others, to hospitals able to provide the specialty care.

The Stay at Home order instructs Californians to remain home as much as possible and prohibits gatherings of any kind, including the mixing of households in a private setting. It encourages outdoor activities and allows access to critical services. The order went into effect at 11:59 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 6.

Among the sectors closing were indoor/outdoor playgrounds and indoor recreational facilities, hair salons, barbershops and personal care services.

Other sectors may offer limited services, including family entertainment centers, as well as amusement parks and movie theaters; museums, zoos and aquariums; live audience sports; card rooms and satellite wagering; bars, breweries, distilleries and wineries; and all other indoor, noncritical infrastructure industries not specifically listed.

Sectors that need to implement additional modifications to capacity and will require 100% masking include outdoor recreational facilities, with no food, drink or alcohol sales and no overnight stays at campgrounds; retail and shopping centers, which will reduce indoor capacity to 20% with entrance metering; hotels and other lodging, which will open for critical infrastructure support only; restaurants, which will be open for takeout or delivery only; offices, which will operate remotely except for critical infrastructure sectors where remote working is not possible; places of worship and political expression, which will be outdoor only; and entertainment production, including professional sports, which will operate with no live audiences and include testing protocol.

All critical infrastructure sectors remain open under current modifications.

For more information and to monitor updates, visit https://covid19.ca.gov/stay-home-except-for-essential-needs/ or contact the Business Line at 760-878-8241.