Newsom

California was the first state in the nation to issue a stay-at-home order in response to COVID-19, a decision health experts say delayed the worst surge of the pandemic for many months.

Newsom defended the use of vaccine-or-test mandates for state employees and mask mandates during the worst moments of the pandemic, tools that some health experts have credited for leaving the state with a low cumulative COVID-19 death rate among the nation’s four most populated states.

Newsom came under criticism during the pandemic, as some questioned the economic toll of the public health measures, the slowness by which schools reopened, and a dinner he attended at a fancy Napa Valley restaurant at a time he was urging social distancing.

In raw terms, California had the lowest per capita COVID-19 death rate among the nation’s four most populous states: 2,560 for every 1 million residents. Florida’s rate was 60% worse, with 4,044 COVID fatalities for every 1 million residents, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of Johns Hopkins University data through early March, when the university ended its data tracking. Some experts, however, caution against comparing the states’ death rates with one another, given how different they are in terms of the age of their populations, overcrowded housing and the like.