‘Loopholes’ In Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti’s Latest COVID Order Causes Confusion

As COVID-19 cases surge, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has issued an order for city residents to stay at home, but it’s causing some confusion about what exactly has changed.

Garcetti said that the “latest data from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health shows more Angelenos are infected with COVID-19 than ever before.”

On Wednesday, the Department of Health reported 5,987 new positive coronavirus cases in the county. The agency said that since November, it has seen average daily cases increase by 225%, with the past week and a half reporting an average jump of over 5,300 cases a day.

“Our City is now close to a devastating tipping point, beyond which the number of hospitalized patients would start to overwhelm our hospital system, in turn risking needless suffering and death. These unfortunate facts about the spread of COVID-19 in our City mean that we must resume some of the more restrictive measures we instituted in the Spring,” Garcetti said.

On Wednesday, the county had just 86 ICU beds remaining, according to Garcetti, as reported by Variety.

The mandate, which follows a stay-at-home order that was issued in June, asks Los Angeles residents to stay home unless they are performing essential activities. Businesses that require people to work on-site, outside of those deemed essential, have also been asked to close.

Bars, nightclubs, movie theaters, indoor entertainment facilities, and theme parks are closed as well as restaurant indoor and outdoor dining until further notice. Restaurants will be able to perform curbside pickup and takeout services. Public playgrounds are also closed as well as indoor portions of museums and zoos.

Both private and public gatherings of people from more than one household are banned.

But the confusion lies in the number of exemptions that Garcetti enacted.

He has allowed grocery stores to operate along with convenience stores and liquor stores. Gas stations will be open, as well as banks, hardware stores, and other home improvement services.

Businesses that offer shipping services can remain open as well as laundromats, taxi and ridesharing services, childcare locations, hotels, motels, and retail stores, including shopping malls, with a capacity limit of 20%. Retail stores must close between the hours of 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.

Places of worship and schools may also remain open.

Residents of Los Angeles will also be also to visit parks and beaches, play golf and tennis, and go to the city’s outdoor lap pools.

Twitter was confused by the number of exemptions that Garcetti provided in the latest stay-at-home order. As a result, the mayor’s name was trending on the social media platform on Thursday morning.

One Twitter user utterly confused by the order compared it to a complicated math equation.

Another person wondered how malls could be open when they weren’t allowed to leave their house for non-essential activities.

One user tweeted that the latest COVID guidelines made “no sense,” a comment echoed by many other Los Angelenos.

Yet another user wondered how there could be so many “loopholes” in the order.

“Ah, yes, time to hunker down and only go out to... pick up my dry cleaning, drop by the mall, grab a shirt at Macy's, stop by the set, take an Uber to the library, hit the treadmill, buy a six-pack, and then ...head back home to keep hunkering down,” quipped another person.

California has reported 1.2 million positive COVID-19 cases to date with Los Angeles seeing 414,304 of those cases, reports the New York Times.