Yolo County moves to orange tier of COVID-19 restrictions — what can reopen now
California health officials on Tuesday placed Yolo County into the orange tier of COVID-19 business and activity restrictions, its second promotion in four weeks.
The move will allow less strict capacity limits for establishments including restaurant dining rooms, gyms and movie theaters, as well as a few types of indoor entertainment businesses to reopen that had to stay closed in the red tier, such as bowling alleys.
Those changes will take effect Wednesday, according to the state and county.
Starting April 1, outdoor sports and live performance events with assigned seating can proceed at 33% of normal capacity in the orange tier, compared to a 20% capacity limit in the red tier and a maximum of 100 attendees in the purple tier.
“This also means that there will be more opportunities to be exposed to COVID and to spread it to other people, so we all need to keep up the same actions that we’ve been doing including wearing masks in public and not gathering with others,” Yolo spokeswoman Jenny Tan said in a Monday video briefing, ahead of the anticipated update.
By the California Department of Public Health’s standards, Yolo this month has boasted some of the lowest virus transmission rates among the state’s 58 counties.
Yolo recorded a test positivity rate of 0.7% in last week’s update and 0.5% this week. Each was the lowest of any county with more than 30,000 residents.
Yolo has also performed by far the most diagnostic tests per capita of any of California’s 58 counties, nearly quadrupling the statewide median each of the past two weeks at more than 1,200 daily tests per 100,000 residents. No other county was above 800, according to the weekly CDPH updates.
County health officer Dr. Aimee Sisson in a recent interview with The Bee explained that this is in large part due to Healthy Davis Together, a partnership between UC Davis and the city of Davis that has helped to build a robust testing network.
The county has also exceeded the statewide pace for vaccination. Yolo has had about 42,000 shots per 100,000 residents, compared to California’s rate of about 38,000 per 100,000, according to CDPH data updated Tuesday.
This week marks the first time Yolo has advanced into orange within the tier framework, which was introduced in late August. Nearby El Dorado and Placer counties entered the tier for a few weeks last fall. Sacramento County has yet to advance to a tier looser than red, which it rejoined last week.
All four of those capital region counties, along with the vast majority of California, were demoted back to the purple tier in a mid-November rollback, responding to the start of the winter surge.
Over the past few weeks, a majority of the state’s counties have departed the purple tier as California’s COVID-19 numbers rebound from the surge.
Numbers are improving broadly across the state, but Yolo is one of just 11 counties that has reached the orange tier or better following the winter surge. Of the remaining 10, four are in the Bay Area (Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara) while the rest are among the state’s least populous (Alpine, Lassen, Mariposa, Plumas, Sierra and Trinity).
This story was originally published March 23, 2021 at 10:46 AM.
