Could California Reopen Earlier Than June 15? [Survey]

LOS ANGELES, CA — Dr. Timothy Brewer recalled seeing more than 200 coronavirus patients during a holiday weekend in late January across the University of California, Los Angeles' medical campuses. Last weekend, Brewer said the hospital system had only three patients in need of treatment for the virus.

"That's just a huge difference," he told Patch.

Brewer is a professor of infectious disease at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

California likely started to turn a corner around that Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, Brewer said. Since then, case numbers have dropped off — and stayed that way. This week, more than a quarter of California's adults are now fully vaccinated, according to state data.

What's more, California's positivity rate, 1.5 percent, became the lowest in the United States on Thursday.

Given these promising metrics, Gov. Gavin Newsom has kept his sights on June 15, a day he'd like to see the state's economy fully reopen.

The mere thought of lifting all restrictions has likely evoked some eyebrow-raising from pandemic-jaded Californians. Over the last several months, dismal reports of variants and expectations of a surge in the Midwest have contributed to skepticism among Golden State residents.

But Brewer offered an unusually optimistic take: The state could reopen even sooner.

"I suspect we'll be open before June 15," Brewer said. "Between the rate with which people are being vaccinated and the current numbers if they stay the way they are — I think there will be increasing public pressure to open up more quickly."

The pressure? It's coming from all angles.

For Newsom, it's likely political as he faces a recall campaign. For county leaders, it's about reopening businesses and jump-starting the local economy. And many Golden State residents crave a return to normalcy.

On Wednesday, five more counties in California moved out of restrictive tiers. Now, more than 87 percent of the population can enjoy the freedoms of the orange tier, only one notch above the most lenient, yellow tier on the state's reopening plan. During the same week last month, more than 83 percent of the population was living under the red tier.

At the rate California is reopening, counties could run out of tiers even as May quickly approaches.

For weeks, the threat of a surge looming in other parts of the U.S. has hung over the Golden State's progress. When numbers started to spike in late March, President Joe Biden urged states to pause reopening plans.

Some 33 states across the nation reported an increase in COVID-19 infections this month. On Monday, the country's seven-day average was up to more than 67,440 cases per day, compared to around 53,000 a month ago, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"I want to recognize that we remain in a complicated stage," Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC director, said Monday. "On the one hand, more people in the United States are being vaccinated every single day at an accelerated pace. On the other hand, cases and hospitalizations are increasing in some areas of the country."

Meanwhile, California's positivity rate — 1.5 percent — has hovered among the lowest in the country for weeks. Just a few months ago, it outpaced many other states, and the state counted tens of thousands of newly reported cases per day at the height of its winter surge.

"We're still [reporting] under 2,500 cases a day now, even though people have been out and more active," Brewer said. "So, again, I think that's a very positive sign that we're moving in the right direction."

So why hasn't the country's spring surge reached California?

Coupled with rising vaccinations, the state may be seeing what Brewer called "the beginnings of a herd immunity" — at least in hard-hit counties.

In Los Angeles County, dubbed the state's coronavirus epicenter, there have been about 1.2 million reported coronavirus cases. But those are only the infections officials can confirm, he said.

"Which means that we've had probably three or four times that number of cases that we don't know about," Brewer said. "Add on top of that the number of people that have been vaccinated, and you're starting to get up around where 50 to 60 percent of the population in L.A. County has either been infected or vaccinated." (Experts don’t yet know what percentage of people would need to get vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, but vaccination is a safer way to build protection than getting sick with COVID-19.)

This could help the state finally get closer to normalcy. It all hinges on whether Californians keep getting inoculated. Vaccine hesitancy and those deciding to rejoin the world before being fully vaccinated is particularly concerning to Brewer.

"People are tired of this, and I understand that," he said. "But the virus is still in our community. Hopefully, people will not use their fatigue as an excuse not to get vaccinated or if they are vaccinated, to stop doing those other measures that are so important.

"We do know that ... while the vaccines are very effective against preventing disease, they're not 100 percent effective against preventing infection," he said.

Sure, but what about highly transmissible variants that are going around? Do they pose a real threat to the state's spring success?

"It's certainly a concern," Brewer said.

Last month, the variant first identified in the United Kingdom became the dominant version of COVID-19 spreading in the U.S., Brewer said. And it is indeed highly contagious.

"The good news about that variant is that studies from Israel and elsewhere show that the vaccines remain highly effective against preventing disease," he said.

The variants Californians should worry about are the two West Coast variants and the one first identified in South Africa. "When you look at those three variants, the protection from vaccination seems to be lower, and it can be about sixfold lower," Brewer said. "But that having been said, the level of protection is probably still high enough to prevent serious disease, hospitalization and death."

He added: "So while these variants are of concern — and they certainly should be tracked at the moment — we're probably still in a pretty good place with our current vaccines."

As Californians learned during the course of the pandemic, everything — especially news about reopening — is subject to disruption. "Now, this may all change because I don't know what percentage of California vaccines were reliant on Johnson & Johnson," Brewer said.

The state continues to receive allocations of the vaccine, but administrations were halted last week following reports from the federal government that six people had developed cases of severe blood clots after being inoculated.

The federal government announced Wednesday that new production of the vaccine will remain paused at an Emergent BioSolutions facility in Baltimore as millions of potential doses were contaminated, CNN reported.

The California Department of Public Health did not immediately respond to Patch for comment.

Federal officials pointed out that blood-clotting cases are rare among millions of inoculations. Even so, the thought of side effects to any degree is likely to raise fears. But Americans should take the government's swift move to halt Johnson & Johnson as a comforting sign, Brewer said.

"People should take that as a sign that, yes, the federal agencies in charge of overseeing these vaccines are very concerned about safety," he said.

Above all, everyone should get a vaccine, Brewer said. "The vaccines remain very effective in addition to being safe. So even though the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been paused, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are still out there. So if you are eligible to be vaccinated — and that's everybody over the age of 16 — please do go ahead."