Long Beach and most cities will begin easing into the next phase of our “Safer at Home” order in the days and weeks ahead. The Governor announced that as early as this Friday, counties and health departments can begin relaxing our guidelines and has provided regions flexibility on the timeline of openings.
I want to share with you the data driving our decisions and timelines.
The Governor has outlined four stages of reopening:
- Stage 1: Safety and Preparedness
- Stage 2: Lower Risk Workplaces
- Stage 3: Higher Risk Workplaces
- Stage 4: End of Stay-At Home Order
Long Beach has been at Stage 1 for the last few weeks. During this stage, we have:
- Seen our hospitalization and ICU trends stabilize. We are currently below a 50% bed capacity rate.
- Increased hospital surge capacity by opening a field hospital at the Long Beach Arena with 100 beds. We now have a total of 1500 hospital beds citywide.
- Begun offering basic healthcare services at a brand new Rapid Assessment Clinic at Long Beach City College, Pacific Coast campus.
- Increased our supply of PPE (personal protective equipment), to the point where we have been able to distribute
- 1.5 million PPE
- 31,000 N-95 masks
- 16,000 gowns
- More than 9,000 cloth/sewn masks through 868 deliveries to our community partners
- Increased our testing capacity to meet demand by setting up six testing locations throughout Long Beach, where in partnership with hospitals and private labs, 12,500 tests have been completed to date
- Plugged into the statewide contact tracing system through the Long Beach Health Department
All of this work has enabled us to track below Los Angeles County for both positive cases and deaths per 100,000 in population.
It has also enabled us to flatten the curve. The number of people who are hospitalized as a result of COVID-19 has stabilized.
We are also seeing a decrease in the number of new cases per day.
This is all possible because we have met the benchmarks in Stage 1. As we transition to Stage 2 please know that we are closely monitoring the data to guide our decisions.
Over the next couple of days Long Beach will be releasing more information on our local process.
We are prepared. We are coordinated, and we will reopen based on the data and science. We will not rush.
The community has been amazing and I have faith that together, we can do this.
