Half-full restaurants and classrooms. Servers delivering your meal wearing masks and gloves. Temperature checks when you walk into a business.

And forget about attending any large gatherings this summer.

That’s the picture Gov. Gavin Newsom painted Tuesday — giving stir-crazy Californians hope that they may be free to leave their houses relatively soon, while also reminding them that life won’t be completely normal for the foreseeable future as long as the coronavirus is still around.

“This can’t be a permanent state, and I want you to know it’s not. It will not be a permanent state,” Newsom said Tuesday. “We recognize the consequences of the stay-at-home orders have a profound impact on the economy. Your personal household budget. Your personal prospects around your future. You just lost a job or you lost wages, or you’re struggling with your dream.”

As the curve continues to flatten and the number of California COVID-19 patients in intensive care dropped slightly to 1,177 people Tuesday, Newsom revealed his strategy for gradually reopening the state. Coupled with needing to see hospitalizations and ICU cases continue to flatten and decline, Newsom also laid out a list of six criteria the state must meet before the shelter-in-place order is rolled back. The list includes ramping up testing, putting protections in place to shield the most vulnerable people, and making sure hospitals are ready for a potential surge in cases that could come once the restrictions are lifted.

Newsom wouldn’t provide a specific timeline, however.

“In two weeks, if we see continuing decline not just in hospitalizations but ICUs and PPE needs … ask me then,” he said. “We’ll be in a very different place. I know you want a timeline. But we can’t get ahead of ourselves. Let’s not make the mistake of pulling the plug too early. We don’t want to make political decisions that puts lives at risk.”

Before he lifts it completely, Newsom would modify the stay-at-home order so it’s gradually less restrictive, he said. If the virus starts spreading more rapidly as a result, he might then backtrack and restore strict restrictions.

But even amid talk of easing the lockdown, coronavirus cases continued to mount. County health departments throughout the state had reported 25,571 cases and 774 deaths as of Tuesday evening. San Francisco reported 987 cases — including 102 at the city’s largest homeless shelter — and 15 deaths. San Mateo County reported 721 cases and 21 deaths.

Several Bay Area counties had not updated their coronavirus tallies by publication time Tuesday. Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties cited delays due to issues with CalREDIE, California’s Reportable Disease Information Exchange. Alameda County’s figures also were later than usual, but officials did not immediately explain why.

As of Monday, Santa Clara County had recorded 1,666 confirmed cases, and 60 people had died.

With the virus continuing to spread, Californians likely won’t be able to return to fully normal living until there’s either a vaccine — probably at least a year off — or enough people recover from the disease to build “herd immunity.”

Large public gatherings such as Memorial Day or Independence Day parades and sporting events likely will remain forbidden through the summer. Mask-wearing, see-through sneeze screens and other trappings of life with coronavirus likely will continue. Restaurants that reopen may have half as many tables, and food servers may wear masks and rubber gloves, bring disposable menus and screen patrons for fevers.

That could be hard to hear for the Bay Area restaurants and bars already struggling under the shelter-in-place orders. Most dining establishments either have closed up entirely or are doing takeout only.

But a half-full restaurant is better than an empty one, pointed out Rick Mitchell, owner of Luka’s Taproom & Lounge in Oakland. Mitchell is making about 30% to 35% of his normal revenue through takeout orders and his Community Kitchens program, and he has furloughed most of his staff. Opening dine-in at half-capacity could bring his revenue up to about 50%.

“It’s not great, and it won’t hire everyone back by any stretch of the imagination,” he said. “But it gives us the chance to make it through six months or however long it takes.”

But Mitchell won’t reopen dine-in service if it means his servers have to wear face masks and gloves and take customers’ temperatures at the door.

“The point of going out to a restaurant is to feel normal and be together the way we were in the past,” he said. “If it’s like going through TSA security and your waiter is wearing a plague mask, it will probably take some of the fun out of going out.”

Newsom also suggested schools may reopen in the fall with staggered schedules to reduce student contact.

But that may not be a bad thing. Lisa Duncanson, who teaches science to students in pre-K through fifth grade at Delaine Eastin Elementary School in Union City, said she and her colleagues have been complaining about overcrowded classrooms for some time. Maybe a pandemic is what it will take to force the issue, she said.

The average class size at her school went from 24 students last year to about 29 this year, and Duncanson has some classes with as many as 38 children, she said. Even if students spent less time in school because classes were staggered — coming every other day, or just in the mornings or afternoons — they could end up learning more, she said.

“When you get classes that big, everything slows down,” Duncanson said of her current class sizes. “When you have fewer kids a lot of times you can hurry up. So in some ways, there could be a system where this really benefits the kids, having smaller groups.”

In the business community, where struggling establishments are eager to open their doors and employees are desperate to get back to work, Rufus Jeffris, vice president of communications for the Bay Area Council, said Newsom’s remarks Tuesday gave him “reason to be encouraged.”

“This is a painful episode. We’re seeing just unprecedented jobless numbers in recent weeks as a result of this,” he said. “And the business community would like nothing better than to reopen the economy.”

But no one wants to reopen if it’s not safe, Jeffris said, adding that he appreciates the governor’s cautious approach.

Dr. Arthur Reingold, division head of epidemiology and biostatistics at UC Berkeley, agreed.

“I think that the governor deserves enormous credit for his response to the problem,” he said, “and I think that everything he’s doing now in terms of how to plan what needs to be in place so we can get people out of their homes and back in the workplace is absolutely spot-on.”

However, Reingold noticed some details missing from the plans the governor announced Tuesday. For example, Newsom’s intention to ramp up testing and contact tracing will require massive improvements in technology and increases in staff and funding, Reingold said.

“Frankly, I don’t know many health departments that currently have enough staff to do what they’d be asked to do,” he said.

Newsom’s remarks Tuesday came a day after he announced, along with governors in Oregon and Washington, that they would coordinate their plans for lifting stay-home orders to ensure a consistent regional approach. Governors of Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island made a similar announcement Monday.

Newsom stressed Tuesday that “localism is determinative,” and while his office would provide a statewide framework, county health officers will continue to make their own decisions based on local conditions.

But President Donald Trump, who has insisted that he — not state governors — has the ultimate authority to reopen the economy, doubled down on his argument Tuesday.

“I will be speaking to all 50 governors very shortly, and I will then be authorizing each individual governor of each individual state to implement a reopening, and a very powerful reopening plan, of their state, of a time and in a manner that is most appropriate,” he said.

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In the Bay Area, where county health officers announced a shelter-in-place order March 16, three days before the statewide stay-home order, Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody said the county has a similar model to the state’s for easing the restrictions.

“It doesn’t give us precise dates,” Cody said. “Our thinking is other types of broad indicators to lighten things up. I don’t think anybody is thinking about an on or off. It’s more thinking about what can we do to mitigate harms from the shelter in place, where can we lighten things up where we’re minimizing risk of transmission.”