California Was a COVID Success. Here’s Why It’s Veering Back to Lockdown.

Weeks before Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement Monday that California would dramatically reverse its reopening, a doctor 2,500 miles away saw a new COVID-19 crisis emerging there.

It began ahead of Memorial Day, as clusters erupted in the deserts of Imperial County, down along the Mexican border. Driven north with increasing commercial activity and seasonal travel, as the state reopened and summer began, the disease tore through nursing homes in Tulare, Modesto, and Fresno counties as May bled into June.