SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Governor Gavin Newsom appeared with four previous California governors to make a plea promoting the use of face coverings in public.
Former governors Pete Wilson, Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jerry Brown all chimed in to advocate for mask wearing during the pandemic.
“It’s about fighting the diseases and keeping ourselves and our families safe,” Davis said in the public service announcement.
The announcement preceded a press conference on Monday where Governor Newsom cited an alarming new statewide statistic.
“We are experiencing and have experienced, just over the last 14 days, some 35.6% of all of the cases,” said Governor Newsom. “They have been reported in just the last 14 days, 46,000 plus new cases.”
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Case increases for 11 counties also caught the eyes of state officials. The numbers are of extra concern to the state and have landed those counties on a watch list, a list which includes both Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties.
Daniel Kim, public information officer with the San Joaquin County Department of Public Health explained how the county’s numbers have been on the rise.
“From the week of June 7 to the week of June 14, we saw a 24% increase of the number of new cases,” said Kim.
He said the rise can be attributed mostly to people congregating.
“A lot of the increase is due to gatherings,” said Kim. “Different households getting together and basically mixing and that increases the risk of individuals getting infected.”
While the increase comes as the economy reopens, Kim said that the reopening isn't the only factor at play.
“It’s sort of this fatigue that’s kind of set in,” he said. “So basically, people are relaxing the behaviors that they were doing to protect themselves and others.”
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