California returns to shutdown mode

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday ordered every county in California to halt indoor dining and bars, as well as shut down churches, gyms and hair salons for 80 percent of the population as the state struggles to control its coronavirus spread.

The hardest hit counties of California will see the toughest constraints, Newsom said. Dozens of counties that have landed on the state’s monitoring list — including most of Southern California, as well as counties in the Central Valley and San Francisco Bay Area — will have to shutter places of worship, fitness centers, barber shops and shopping malls.

While Newsom had previously ordered those especially stricken counties to bar indoor commerce like inside dining and museums, his Monday order expanded that mandate to cover every county in California — a stark acknowledgment that the state must do more to control a viral spike that threatens to unravel gains made during a gradually easing statewide lockdown.