Governor Ralph Northam announced another easing of Covid restrictions to take effect on April 1st, targeting sports and entertainment venues, in a press conference Tuesday.
The new restrictions will allow social gatherings to have up to 50 people indoors and 100 people outdoors. Entertainment venues can host 30% of their capacity, up to 500 people indoors. Outdoor venues can also have 30%, with no top limit. Recreational sporting events, indoors, and outside will be limited to 30% of capacity. 100 spectators will be allowed at indoor recrational sporting events, and 500 outside.
The new restrictions mirror an announcement Northam made about graduation ceremonies last week. Northam capped outdoor graduation ceremonies at 5,000 people or 30% of capacity, whichever is less. Indoor graduations are limited to 30% of the venue's capacity, with a maximum of 500.
Northam said he would adjust restrictions if infection counts or the burden on the healthcare system changes.
“It really depends on Virginians. If we continue to be careful wearing our masks in public, washing our hands, keeping our distance and getting vaccinated, I expect our case count will keep going down,” he said.
When asked about restaurants and bar capacity, Northam said that those venues were higher risk and he wasn’t ready to increase the allowed capacity.
“Any type of place of business like that, where that's high risk, we're going to do it in a measured approach.”
State Health Commissioner Dr Norm Oliver said the state needs to keep an eye on coronavirus variants that are more contagious and are spreading in parts of the US.
“We've recorded somewhere around a couple hundred cases of the variants. We suspect that it's far more than that,” Oliver said. “The longer that the virus is around and able to mutate the the danger is it will happen upon a variant that is in fact more dangerous.”
Northam also announced that the federal government was increasing his weekly allocation of the Johnson and Johnson Vaccine. The state will get 48,000 more doses of the one-dose vaccine next week. About that many people have received a dose of the vaccine in an average day statewide.
Virginia may meet Biden's May 1 goal of having vaccine eligibility open to all adults
President Joe Biden said he wanted states to have all adults be eligible for vaccines by May 1. Northam said he was confident Virginia would beat that date.
Dr. Danny Avula, the head of the statewide vaccination effort, gave some insight into how doses will be allocated so the state could open up availability all at once.
“We are now getting to a phase of the vaccination rollout where we are seeing demand start to wane. I think that is happening more so in rural communities,” Avula said. “There are communities where we're seeing the demand in phase one, slow down. So that means we're going to push vaccine to other parts of the state so that we can all try to move forward into the general population around the same time."
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
