The COVID-19 emergency state in California, the most populous state of the United States, officially ended on Tuesday, nearly three years after Governor Gavin Newsom issued the country's first statewide stay-at-home order, Trend reports citing Xinhua.
Newsom issued a proclamation on Tuesday terminating the state's COVID-19 state of emergency. Since March 2020, the statewide emergency declaration has given Newsom the power to suspend or change laws in California to fight the spread of COVID-19.
"People who lost their life to COVID, people who lost neighbors and loved ones, we lament and are still saddened by that," said California Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly. "But to get to this point where we feel prepared to lift the state of emergency to move forward, that's a big deal for Californians across the state."
At this point in the pandemic, most people have some sort of immunity to COVID-19 from vaccination or infection, or both, said Dean Blumberg, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at University of California, Davis.
"The risk of severe disease is less at this point, but it's not zero," Blumberg said.