Wednesday: Gov. Gavin Newsom starts campaigning against the effort to recall him. Also: Spring is here.

By Jill Cowan

Good morning.

This week, California is taking its biggest strides yet toward a full reopening, a year after the state became the first in the nation to impose a shelter-in-place order.

For the first time in months, restaurants across the vast majority of California, including in Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego and Orange Counties, are allowed to open indoor dining rooms. Gyms, movie theaters and other businesses have also gotten the green light to operate inside at reduced capacity, as most of the state’s 58 counties are allowed to move to less restrictive tiers in the state’s color-coded reopening framework.

“And we’re going to see even more movement next week,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Tuesday, speaking from an Alameda County elementary school. “We’re going to see more and more business activity, more people back in schools, more energy, more optimism about our state and its future.”

He said that public health officials were still figuring out what a green tier might entail, but that one was in the works. (When he first unveiled the state’s color-coded tier system, the governor said that yellow would be the least restrictive for the foreseeable future — green suggested a level of permissiveness not yet safe to even contemplate.)

[Here’s what to know about the state’s reopening process.]

Mr. Newsom highlighted the state’s relatively low rate of positive coronavirus tests, and how far the numbers have dropped over the past eight weeks, since the state emerged from its deadliest surge.

He emphasized repeatedly that even as the state continues to grapple with confusion over its vaccine rollout, “the only constraint is supply,” and said officials were working to be able to make vaccines available to any adult by May 1, as President Biden has directed.

“Our North Star continues to be equity,” he said. “It’s probably the hardest thing we’re doing.”

Still, Mr. Newsom noted that nearly 13 million doses of the vaccine had been administered already, more than most other countries and the most of any state.

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