Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday he is coordinating with governors in Oregon and Washington to end the statewide stay-home order he imposed nearly a month ago to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus pandemic, a surprise shift as hospitals here see fewer patients than expected.

Newsom gave no timeline Monday for lifting California’s first-in-the-nation stay-home order issued March 19 but said that he would provide details Tuesday of the benchmarks that would lead to a reopening. The order has kept schools and all but essential businesses closed and most residents confined to their homes.

“We need to see a decline in the rate of spread of the virus before large-scale reopening,” Newsom, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said in a joint statement, “and we will be working in coordination to identify the best metrics to guide this.”

States on both coasts began talking about reopening plans as the picture in hospitals began to improve, particularly in the Bay Area, one of the first in the country to see cases and the first to impose social-distancing mandates.

“There’s a little room to breathe that hasn’t been there before,” said Dr. Andra Blomkalns, who chairs the Department of Emergency Medicine at Stanford University. “We’re incredibly fortunate things seem to be flattening out.”

Across the country, governors of Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island also decided Monday to form a committee of public health and economic development officials to develop guidelines on when and how to ease the restrictions they put in place in their states.

The two separate regional announcements came hours after President Trump indicated that he, not the governors, would have the ultimate say on how and when to reopen the coronavirus-stricken country, concerned about the lockdowns’ damage to the national economy.

For the purpose of creating conflict and confusion, some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President of the United States & the Federal Government. Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect…. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 13, 2020

Taking to Twitter on Monday, Trump said, “It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons.” He added, “With that being said, the Administration and I are working closely with the Governors.”

While some governors sniped back at Trump’s tweet, Newsom struck a diplomatic tone, saying that he had been working closely with the federal government for weeks. “I have all the confidence in the world that we’ll maintain that collaborative spirit in terms of the decision making that we make here within the state of California,” Newsom said.

Claremont McKenna College political science professor John J. Pitney Jr. called Newsom’s measured reaction a smart move.

“Debating Trump would be unnecessary since there is no constitutional basis for Trump’s position,” Pitney said. “Newsom is smart to stick to science and data instead of getting into partisan spitting matches.”

Newsom’s office has chiefly used an open-sourced Johns Hopkins University model to assess likely impacts of the pandemic on California’s hospitals, said Rodger Butler, spokesman for the California Health and Human Services Agency.

That model had projected there would be 10,711 suspected and confirmed COVID-19 hospitalizations in California by April 12. The actual number: 5,048.

Other models, including a widely respected one at the University of Washington, had projected demand on California hospitals would peak as soon as Monday, though it later revised that projection to Friday. Ali Mokdad, professor of health metrics sciences at the university, said that is simply because of a lag in reporting cases over the weekend and that California is still in good shape.

Newsom has been reluctant to discuss success in “bending the curve” of new infections downward, which would clear the way toward ending the restrictions, fearing people would stop observing the “social distancing” mandates. But he acknowledged Monday that they have worked better than expected.

“The curve is being bent because of you and your willingness to stay at home,” Newsom told Californians, adding that over the normally busy Easter weekend, “we didn’t see the kind of surge people predicted” gathering for celebrations that could help spread the disease.

As of Monday, more than 24,000 Californians have now tested positive for the novel coronavirus, including more than 5,000 in the Bay Area, according to updated data compiled by this news organization. A total of 82 new deaths were reported over the weekend, bringing the statewide death toll to 721.

Of the 5,048 patients confirmed or suspected of having COVID-19 in hospitals around the state, 1,552 are in intensive care unit beds, according to the latest data released by the California Department of Public Health.

But the picture is not the same throughout the state. Bay Area counties, which were the first in the country to issue shelter-in-place orders March 16, have seen more progress than those in Southern California

The number of COVID-19 patients in Bay Area ICUs on Monday was at 171 — the lowest it has been in nearly a week after peaking at 199 on Wednesday. Across the five-county Bay Area, 420 COVID-19 patients were in the hospital, down 6 percent from a peak of 445 on Wednesday.

The number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care in Los Angeles County has more than tripled in the past week — from 132 to 559 — and the number of hospitalizations has spiked by 65 percent. During that same time, the number of Santa Clara County COVID-19 patients in intensive care has declined by 27 percent — from 91 to 66 — and the number of hospitalizations has dropped by about half.

Newsom and the other governors said it was important for the Western states to work together, noting that “COVID-19 has preyed upon our interconnectedness” and that by “acting in close coordination and collaboration” they could “ensure the virus can never spread wildly in our communities.”

Newsom noted that cases continue to increase, even if not as much as was feared.

“In the aggregate, the case numbers are rising,” Newsom said. “That’s why it’s incredibly important to continue to do what we’ve done until these lines turn in the opposite direction.”

Countries in Asia hit earlier by the pandemic imposed strict quarantines but began easing social distancing and are now seeing cases spike again. Singapore, seen as a model for controlling the outbreak, temporarily closed schools and some workplaces last week.

Doctors such as Stanford’s Blomkalns worry that could happen here, too, if restrictions lift too soon.

“The stakes are too high, so I’d be in no hurry,” Blomkalns said. “Even though there are devastating consequences on businesses, a re-spike of the pandemic would just be worse.”

But Blomkalns said the impact on Stanford hospital has been far short of what they prepared for. They rearranged units to expand intensive care capacity internally to a maximum of 120 beds, but she said “we’re not even using 10 percent.”

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Pac-12 football will be back in 2020, but the specifics remain a mystery And while she said “our staff has struggled mightily” caring for stricken patients and their families, she said they haven’t seen the impacts of places such as Italy where hospitals were overwhelmed.

“We don’t have a refrigerated truck serving as a morgue,” she said

In fact, the worst days at Stanford’s hospital were about three and a half weeks ago when case numbers began increasing rapidly, peaking about 10 days ago.

As long as the positive trend continues, a lifting of the lockdown looks promising.

“All of us have a little cabin fever,” Newsom said, “and we look forward to coming back to a little normalcy.”