Announcements, COVID-19 | February 25, 2022

Newsom Rolls Back Most COVID-19-Related Executive Orders

Governor Gavin Newsom today announced the continued phased rollback of executive orders issued in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the Governor took action to “lift all but 5 percent of COVID-19 related executive order provisions” while maintaining critical measures to support the state’s ongoing response and recovery efforts. According to the Newsom Administration, the remaining 17 executive actions include maintaining the state’s testing and vaccination programs and protecting hospital and health facility capacity.

These include:

  • COVID-19 Testing – Four provisions provide flexibility necessary to support the state’s COVID-19 testing program. Under the SMARTER Plan, the state will need the flexibility to process at least 500,000 tests per day.
  • Vaccination and Boosters – Two provisions provide flexibility to support the state’s vaccination and booster efforts. This includes waiving licensing requirements temporarily to enable pharmacists and pharmacist technicians to administer COVID-19 vaccines and waiving requirements to allow the state to offer mobile vaccine clinics.
  • Hospital Capacity and Vulnerable Populations – 11 provisions remain necessary to protect capacity in the health care delivery system and vulnerable populations, particularly during COVID-19 surges. This includes provisions allowing health workers from out of state and enabling certain agencies to provide remote and expanded nonresidential services for more clients.

The Administration notes that prior to today’s action, only 15 percent of COVID-19-related executive orders remained in effect. 19 remaining provisions were terminated immediately today, with an additional 18 provisions to expire on March 31, 2022, and 15 provision to expire on June 30, 2022. The Governor notes as part of the state’s COVID-19 SMARTER Plan, additional provisions will be lifted as they are no longer needed to support the ongoing pandemic response.

The Governor additionally issued a proclamation terminating 12 open states of emergency related to various fires, heat waves, and other incidents dating back to 2015.

The order rolling back additional COVID-19-related executive actions is available here. Additional information from the Newsom Administration is available here.