10 counties improve in California’s COVID-19 opening tiers. Little change for other 48
The latest numbers are in, and this week’s list is here: 10 California counties were permitted Tuesday by the state health department to proceed further in reopening from coronavirus pandemic restrictions.
It’s the sixth week for the four-tier system, which ranks counties by COVID-19 risk levels according to several key data metrics and establishes requirements for businesses and gatherings based on those classifications. The tiers from most to least restrictive are purple, red, orange and yellow.
This week, six counties moved from purple to red: Colusa, Kern, Kings, San Benito, Stanislaus and Sutter. Just 10 of the state’s 58 counties, including most-populous Los Angeles, remain in the purple tier.
Alameda, Placer and Santa Clara counties moved to the orange tier. Tiny Sierra County, where about 3,000 people live, improved to the yellow tier.
This week’s tier placements assessed data pulled from Sept. 27 to Oct. 3, according to the California Department of Public Health.
No counties were demoted to a stricter stage, though four — Modoc, Riverside, Shasta and Trinity — are in the “adjudication” process with CDPH after failing to meet the criteria for their current tiers this week. If they fail to meet them again next week, they will be demoted to a worse tier.
Very few counties aside from those 10 that were promoted this week made progress toward their next tiers. Outside of those and seven others that were already in the lowest possible yellow tier, just two of the remaining 41 counties — Butte and Napa — met all criteria for the next available tier this week.
Counties must meet all criteria for a less restrictive tier for two consecutive weeks before being promoted. That means, barring a change by CDPH to the county requirements, Butte and Napa are the only two counties that would be allowed to advance to a better tier next week.
CDPH unveiled the new tier system at the end of August, in an effort to make economic reopening a more gradual process and help mitigate another surge in COVID-19 activity like the one that lasted most of the summer.
California has reported more than 852,000 COVID-19 infections and 16,581 resident deaths from the respiratory disease since the pandemic started seven months ago. The rate of increase for each is at its lowest point in more than three months, and there are fewer than one-third as many patients hospitalized and in intensive care units with confirmed coronavirus cases as there were in late July.
New cases and hospitalizations in recent days, though, have been on more of a plateau than a decline, data show.
State health officials recorded only eight new deaths Monday and nine Tuesday, according to daily CDPH updates. Remarkably, that’s the first time California has reported single-digit fatality totals on back-to-back days since late March.
Where do Sacramento-area counties stand?
Within the six-county region, Sutter County moved to the red tier this week, meaning it can reopen restaurants, gyms, shopping centers, places of worship and more for indoor operations, with strict capacity limits. It’s now on the same level as adjacent Yuba County, with which it shares a bi-county health office.
Placer County moved to the orange tier, meaning it can expand its capacity for those same activities and can also allow a few less essential businesses, such as bowling alleys, to open.
El Dorado County, which got a warning from the state last week after its numbers dropped out of the orange tier, improved this week to retain the county’s status.
El Dorado is, however, the only county in the Sacramento region that has failed to meet the state’s newly introduced “health equity” metric. That metric requires counties with more than 106,000 residents to demonstrate low COVID-19 activity, by measure of test positivity, in its most disadvantaged neighborhoods.
After 12 counties fell short of the equity standard at its outset last week, the health equity requirements were loosened a bit. Eight counties still failed to meet the state’s equity goals this week: El Dorado, Fresno, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Joaquin and Shasta. The state says a county won’t be demoted to a more restrictive tier for failing to meet the equity metric, but it can’t move forward until it does.
Sacramento and Yolo counties remained in the red tier, as they were last week. Yolo County met all orange criteria in last week’s assessment. Though Yolo’s test positivity of 2.4% came well below the 4.9% cutoff, the county barely missed the new case requirement, reporting 4.2 daily new infections per 100,000 residents to surpass the upper limit by 0.2. That means the two-week clock starts over.
Sacramento County entered the red tier two weeks ago, and hasn’t yet notched a week meeting all orange-tier criteria. Its 2.8% test positive ranked well enough this week, but its 5.1 daily new cases per 100,000 residents remain too high. The infection rate dropped slightly; last week, it was 5.3.
County officials challenged the public earlier this month with an “orange by Halloween” campaign. To meet the holiday-centered goal, Sacramento will have to meet orange criteria both of the next two weeks.
No trick-or-treating, please, health leaders plead
Speaking of Halloween, Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said Tuesday that trick-or-treating and in-person costume parties are both “strongly discouraged” this year in California because they are high-risk activities for viral spread.
Ghaly pointed to the difficulties that trick-or-treating create for contact tracing efforts.
The new state guidelines recommend celebrating the holiday with activities like an online costume contest or seeing a scary movie at a drive-in.
Shasta, Tehama have state’s highest rates of new infections
On the north end of the Sacramento Valley, Shasta and neighboring Tehama last week became the first two counties to move backwards in the new tier system, and Shasta County appears well on its way to falling back to square one next week.
In this week’s assessment, the pair had by far the highest rates of new infections per capita. Shasta had 17.6 daily new confirmed cases per 100,000 residents, and Tehama had 14.7.
Both rates are more than double the cutoff for the red tier, which is 7 new daily cases.
Latest Sacramento-area COVID-19 numbers
Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer, Yolo, Sutter and Yuba has combined for over 34,000 lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases and at least 591 fatalities as of Tuesday.
Sacramento County health officials have reported a total of 23,850 cases and 458 deaths, adding a three-day total of 201 new cases Monday and 119 more Tuesday.
There were 77 patients in Sacramento County hospitals with confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 19 in intensive care units, according to state data updated Tuesday morning. The hospitalized total stayed the same but ICU patients decreased by six from Monday’s total.
Through the first eight days of October, at least 10 Sacramento County residents have died of COVID-19, according to health officials.
Yolo County has reported just under 3,000 infections. Health officials have received positive coronavirus test results from 2,966 patients, and have reported 56 deaths from COVID-19. The county added 13 new cases Saturday, 14 on Sunday and 12 on Monday.
Yolo had four cases in hospital beds, including two in ICUs, according to state data Tuesday morning.
Placer County has reported 3,838 total infections and 51 deaths, adding 88 cases Tuesday morning since the last update, which came Friday.
The county says on its local dashboard that it has 11 patients in hospital beds being treated specifically for COVID-19, with one confirmed case in an ICU.
El Dorado County health officials have reported a total of 1,259, reporting 20 total from the weekend through Monday.
One patient is hospitalized in El Dorado County, in the ICU, according to state data.
Sutter County has reported 1,782 coronavirus infections and 12 deaths, according to data updated Monday evening. Three are hospitalized in Sutter with none in the ICU, the county says.
Yuba County officials have reported 1,236 infections and 10 dead from the disease. Seven Yuba patients are hospitalized, the county reports.
This story was originally published October 13, 2020 at 2:54 PM.
