California will allow various outdoor activities — including sports stadiums and live performance venues — to resume at limited capacity next month, state officials said Friday.
Starting April 1st, outdoor sports stadiums, concert venues and amusement parks across the state may welcome a limited number of guests back as officials push to vaccinate more residents against COVID-19, said California Health and Human Services Agency Dr. Mark Ghaly in a news release.
“With case rates and hospitalizations significantly lower, the arrival of three highly effective vaccines and targeted efforts aimed at vaccinating the most vulnerable communities, California can begin gradually and safely bringing back more activities, especially those that occur outdoors and where consistent masking is possible,” Ghaly said.
Capacity restrictions will vary according to which level of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s color-coded reopening system counties are in. For sports and performance venues in the “widespread” or purple tier, capacity will be limited to 100 people or fewer and attendance will be limited to regional visitors, with advanced reservations required and no concession sales. In the next-lowest “substantial” or red tier, capacity will be limited to 20 percent, with limited concessions, followed by 33 percent in the orange tier and 67 percent in the yellow tier.
In the Bay Area, Santa Clara, San Francisco and San Mateo counties are in the red tier, with Alameda County and Contra Costa County expected to join as soon as next week. The state has promised to revamp the threshold for the orange tier in coming weeks, so it is possible some of these counties will advance to that tier by April 1.
Across all tiers, attendance will be limited to in-state visitors, the department said.
Amusement parks, meanwhile, may reopen at 15% capacity in the red tier, followed by 25% and 35% in the yellow tier, respectively, again with attendance limited to California visitors only.
Earlier this week, Newsom hinted that possible changes were afoot during a press briefing in Long Beach, saying that he expected major league ballparks in California to reopen for limited fans by the time Opening Day hits in the first weeks of April.
“There’s not only a possibility, we’ve had advanced conversations,” Newsom said Wednesday. “We’re working on the final details.”
The decision comes on the heels of a new scheme that links vaccine distribution to reopening, loosening restrictions for counties to advance within tiers after 2 million vaccine doses have been delivered to vulnerable zip codes. As of Friday, the state has administered about 9.6 million vaccines, with 3 million people fully vaccinated.
Staff writer Shayna Rubin contributed to this report.
