Sacramento, 9 other California counties move to red COVID tier; 3 more miss out
California promoted 10 counties from the strict purple tier to the looser red tier of COVID-19 restrictions Tuesday, including Sacramento.
The state health department already promoted 13 counties to less restrictive tiers over the weekend, and signaled late last week 13 more were projected to move from the strict purple tier to the looser red tier Tuesday.
However, three of the latter 13 had case rates spike back above the red-tier threshold and therefore did not move up: Kings, San Joaquin and Yuba will stay in the purple tier, according to the weekly tier update from the California Department of Public Health.
The promotion from purple to red allows indoor restaurant dining and a number of other types of businesses, including gyms and movie theaters, to reopen for indoor operations.
“Although we have decreasing case rates and are working to vaccinate those who live and work in Sacramento County, we must continue to adhere to the same public health measures to prevent a surge in COVID-19 cases — especially due to the variant strains that are more easily transmitted to others,” said Sacramento County Health Officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye.
“This means that as some businesses have greater capacity to open, we must still limit our gatherings, maintain 6 feet distance and wear masks in public spaces.”
Lake, Monterey, Riverside, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Sutter, Tehama, Tulare and Ventura counties joined Sacramento in upgrading from purple to red. The reopening rule changes take effect Wednesday.
CDPH on Sunday promoted Amador, Colusa, Contra Costa, Los Angeles, Mendocino, Mono, Orange, Placer, San Benito, San Bernardino, Siskiyou, Sonoma and Tuolumne counties from purple to red. Those changes area already in effect.
Eleven of the state’s 58 counties remain in the tightest restriction level: the three held back Tuesday, along with Fresno, Glenn, Inyo, Kern, Madera, Merced, Nevada and Stanislaus. Of those, Kern, Nevada and Stanislaus recorded red-tier metrics for the first necessary week, and will therefore be eligible to advance as early as March 23 if their case rates stay below the threshold.
Tier status is also a critical component of the state’s school reopening plan. Districts in red, orange and yellow tier counties face losing 1% of their portion of a $2 billion statewide COVID-19 safety fund for each school day they’re not offering in-person instruction for at least grades K-6 as well as one middle or high school grade, starting April 1.
Also April 1, according to recently updated guidelines, sports and live performance events can proceed outdoors, with up to 100 fans in attendance in purple-tier counties and up to 20% of a venue’s normal capacity in the red tier. Amusement parks are required to stay closed in the purple tier but can open at 15% capacity in the red tier, also effective starting in April.
It takes two consecutive weeks of meeting all necessary criteria — fewer than 10 daily cases per 100,000 residents; a test positivity rate below 8%; and, for counties with more than 106,000 residents, a “health equity” positivity rate below 8% in socioeconomically disadvantaged ZIP codes — to depart the purple tier.
Sacramento County in this week’s update had a test positivity rate of 3.2%, health equity positivity of 5.2% and a daily case rate of eight per 100,000.
The three counties that missed out Friday met both positivity requirements but had their daily case rates rise back above 10 per 100,000: Yuba at 12.1, Kings at 11 and San Joaquin at 10.5. The two-consecutive-week requirement means none of the three can move into the red tier until March 30 at the earliest.
Tuesday’s update from the state health department also promoted San Mateo County from the red tier to the looser orange level, which allows looser capacity limits as well as some indoor entertainment businesses like bowling alleys to open.
Another five counties could move from red to orange as early as next week: Lassen, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Trinity and Yolo.
The weekend promotions and some of Tuesday’s expected moves were prompted by a recent rule change: California loosened the cutoff for the case rate metric from seven daily cases per 100,000 to 10 per 100,000 once the state reached 2 million vaccine doses administered in disadvantaged areas, defined as the bottom quartile within the state’s “Healthy Places Index.”
The criteria will loosen again, for the move from red to orange, once that bottom HPI quartile reaches 4 million doses. The tally was at 2.3 million as of Tuesday’s state data update.
California COVID-19 by the numbers
Coronavirus activity in California has fallen hard from the intense and deadly winter surge.
Test positivity, viewed by health officials as a key metric for monitoring the true spread of COVID-19, was reported Tuesday at 1.8% for the preceding seven days — the lowest rate of the entire pandemic. CDPH data show this metric peaked during the surge at 17.2% on the last day of 2020.
Hospitalizations are down substantially as well. The state Tuesday reported about 3,050 virus patients in hospital beds including 827 in intensive care units. Each is the lowest total in more than four months, down from early January peaks of about 22,000 hospitalized and 4,900 in ICUs.
Deaths, which are the last metric to decline from a surge, have also cratered.
The state recently updated its online data trackers to sort COVID-19 fatalities by death date rather than the dates on which they were reported. Though this change shows the past three weeks as “pending” because of the time it takes to confirm deaths, it also shows that the second and third weeks of February saw daily rates of 0.2 and 0.1 deaths per 100,000 residents, down from the peak of 1.7 per 100,000 in December.
To date, California has confirmed more than 3.53 million COVID-19 cases and recorded 55,372 deaths from the disease.
Latest on vaccination
CDPH in a Monday update, three months to the day since the first shots were injected in the state, said California has surpassed 12 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine administered. The total as of Tuesday exceeded 12.6 million.
State health officials say about 4.34 million people have been fully vaccinated and another 4.19 million partially vaccinated. That means about 21% of California’s total population, and 28% of its adult population, is at least partially vaccinated.
The CEO of Blue Shield of California, the insurer hired by the state as its third-party administrator for vaccination, said late last week that the state expects weekly supply from the federal government to rise from its current rate of about 1.6 million doses to about 2.5 million in April.
The state on Monday opened vaccine eligibility for those ages 16 to 64 with qualifying medical conditions or disabilities as well as those who are pregnant. California also recently expanded priority to include public transit workers, janitors and the homeless.
President Joe Biden during a televised address last week directed states to make the COVID-19 vaccine eligible to all adults no later than May 1.
About 31 million adults live in California. CDPH on its vaccination webpage estimates that phases 1A and 1B — health workers, long-term care home residents and staff, Californians ages 65 and older plus a few other sectors of essential workers — combine for roughly 15 million.
Residents with preexisting health conditions make up about 4.4 million, CDPH says, though it is unclear whether that estimate includes overlap.
Citing a need to increase equity, the state earlier this month began doubling its allocations into the lowest HPI quartile — disadvantaged communities for which data show COVID-19 rates are high but vaccine administration early in the rollout had been disproportionately low.
A little less than two weeks ago, state Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said the bottom quartile had received about 17% of the doses that had been administered compared to 34% for the top quartile.
The gap has narrowed: data updated Tuesday show the bottom quartile at 18.6% and the top quartile at 31%.
Sacramento area: Over 2,200 dead, hospital rates fall or plateau
The six-county Sacramento region has reported more than 153,000 lab-confirmed cases and at least 2,218 virus deaths over the course of the pandemic.
Sacramento County has reported 95,556 cases and 1,551 resident deaths from COVID-19. The county reported three deaths Tuesday following 27 in the previous seven days, down from 33 the week before that.
By date of death occurrence, December and January were by far Sacramento County’s two deadliest months of the pandemic. Health officials have confirmed 384 deaths for December, 323 for January and 144 for February. At least nine died in the first week of March.
Prior to December, the county’s deadliest month of the pandemic was August, at 181 virus deaths.
The countywide hospital total has stayed mostly steady since March 8, moving from 118 to 119, but the ICU total has dropped from 39 to 19.
Placer County health officials have confirmed a total of 20,364 infections and 232 deaths. Placer last reported a COVID-19 fatality Feb. 26.
State data showed 40 virus patients in Placer hospitals including nine ICUs as of Tuesday, down from 44 and 12 on March 8.
Yolo County has reported 12,996 total cases and 190 deaths. The county has confirmed four deaths in the past week.
Yolo had just two virus patients hospitalized as of Tuesday including one in an ICU, each half of Monday’s totals.
El Dorado County has reported 9,296 positive test results and 105 deaths. The county has added five deaths in the past week.
The county has now suffered 100 COVID-19 deaths since Thanksgiving, compared to just five during the first eight months of the pandemic.
State data on Tuesday showed El Dorado with only one hospitalized patient, not in an ICU, down from three hospitalized including two in ICUs at the start of last week.
In Sutter County, at least 8,996 people have contracted the virus and 100 have died. Officials have reported two deaths in the past week.
Yuba County, which shares a health office with Sutter, has reported 5,874 infections and 40 dead, adding one death in the past week.
The lone hospital serving the Yuba-Sutter bi-county region — Adventist-Rideout in Marysville — had nine hospitalized virus patients as of Tuesday, down from 16 early last week, with the ICU total dropping from three to one. Nine hospitalized matches the region’s lowest total since Nov. 13.
This story was originally published March 16, 2021 at 8:03 AM.
