4 counties promoted in California COVID tier system; Sacramento-area deaths top 2,400
With coronavirus infection numbers still steadily improving across most of the state, four California counties on Tuesday moved to looser reopening tiers in an update from the state health department.
All three counties moved up that were eligible to move into the second-loosest restriction level, the so-called orange tier: Amador, Glenn and Sutter were all promoted, bringing the tally to 40 of California’s 58 counties in the orange tier.
However, only one of the five counties that was eligible for possible promotion from orange into the loosest tier, yellow, made that move. Mendocino joined Alpine, Lassen and Sierra counties in yellow. Mariposa, Plumas, Santa Cruz and Tuolumne all met yellow-tier criteria last week but not this week, so they will stay in orange.
Four different orange-tier counties could join the yellow tier as early as next week if their COVID-19 case rates stay low: Los Angeles, Marin, San Francisco and Trinity.
Two of the remaining 13 red-tier counties could advance to orange as early as next week: Inyo and Yuba. The remaining 11 did not meet the case rate criteria for the orange tier in last week’s update, and therefore won’t be eligible to move up until mid-May at the earliest. It takes two consecutive weeks meeting the requirements to be promoted.
The 11 still stuck in the red tier include Sacramento and Placer counties.
Each of those capital region counties saw its case rate improve slightly compared to last week, when both were reported at 9.0 daily cases per 100,000 residents. Sacramento’s rate fell to 8.4 per 100,000 in this week’s update, and Placer’s dropped to 8.0 per 100,000. Progress will have to come faster, though, to reach the orange-tier threshold of less than six per 100,000.
No county remains in the tightest purple tier, which kept indoor businesses such as restaurant dining rooms, gyms and movie theaters closed entirely.
In the red tier, those businesses are allowed open with strict capacity limits. The orange tier loosens capacity limits, and also allows a few indoor entertainment businesses, such as bowling alleys, to reopen. The yellow tier reduces capacity restrictions further.
The four tiers also govern crowd sizes — with and without proof of vaccination — at both indoor and outdoor venue events, such as sporting events and live performances.
Gov. Gavin Newsom set June 15 as the target date for lifting all COVID-19 business restrictions, though the mask mandate would remain in place. Newsom said the state would reopen its economy by that date unless there were significant setbacks in hospitalizations or vaccine supply.
COVID-19 in California by the numbers
The Golden State continues to trim down already-record low infection numbers at the statewide level.
CDPH on Monday and Tuesday reported test positivity rate for the previous week at 1.2%. That’s the state’s lowest reported rate since testing began early last year, and it’s also the lowest recent rate among all 50 states, according to a data tracker from Johns Hopkins University.
About 1,780 virus patients were in hospitals statewide, including 431 in intensive care units, as of Tuesday’s state data update. Those are down from about 2,150 hospitalized and more than 560 in ICUs at the start of April. At California’s worst peak of the winter surge, nearly 22,000 were hospitalized and 4,900 in intensive care.
Fatalities are also continuing to trend downward. CDPH reports the average for COVID-19 deaths was about 32 a day as of early April, with more recent totals still pending. At one point in mid-January, more than 650 Californians were dying of the virus per day, state data show.
To date, California has reported more than 3.63 million lab-confirmed cases and 60,208 deaths from the disease, CDPH said Tuesday, reporting just five new deaths in that day’s update.
18 million Californians have had a vaccine dose
California providers continue to administer a few hundred thousand doses of COVID-19 vaccine per day, with the state recently surpassing 28 million total doses given.
Close to 11.8 million Californians are now fully vaccinated with either one shot of the Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine or two shots of either Pfizer or Moderna. Nearly 6.5 million others are partially vaccinated with a first dose of Pfizer or Moderna, according to CDPH.
That means more than 18.2 million people in California are at least partially vaccinated. That’s about 45% of the state’s overall population and 59% of its adult population. None of the three vaccines are authorized yet for use in children under age 16, with Pfizer’s vaccine the only one authorized in ages 16 and 17.
Federal health officials recommended a pause in use of the J&J vaccine on April 13 and lifted that pause last Friday, as regulatory agencies investigated a small number of cases of a rare but severe blood clotting condition in recipients.
Newsom and CDPH announced over the weekend that J&J doses could resume “immediately” in California. J&J continues to make up a small fraction of the state’s vaccine supply flow, due to nationwide manufacturing issues reported before the pause began.
The University of California Health system reported Monday that a UC team of patient-care and support personnel has administered more than 1 million doses. The push involved “the equivalent of 130 employees working full time for 16 weeks,” UC Health leaders wrote.
Death toll in six-county Sacramento area passes 2,400
The six-county capital region of Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer, Yolo, Sutter and Yuba counties has reported more than 163,000 lab-confirmed cases and at least 2,403 virus deaths over the course of the pandemic.
Sacramento County has reported 102,614 cases and 1,659 resident deaths from COVID-19, last updated Tuesday.
The countywide hospitalized total has been climbing, reported Tuesday at 99, up from 97 one week earlier and 88 one week before that. The ICU total has fluctuated some, most recently reported by CDPH at 24.
Placer County health officials have confirmed a total of 22,107 infections and 286 deaths.
State data on Tuesday showed 41 virus patients in Placer hospitals including 13 in ICUs, compared to 42 hospitalized with eight in intensive care one week earlier.
Yolo County has reported 13,621 total cases and 205 deaths.
Yolo had three virus patients hospitalized as of Tuesday’s state data update, none of them in intensive care, compared to two patients with one in an ICU a week earlier.
El Dorado County has reported 9,906 positive test results and 109 deaths. The county has reported one death in the past two weeks.
State data on Tuesday showed El Dorado with four hospitalized patients, one of them in an ICU, compared to two hospitalized patients both in ICUs a week earlier.
In Sutter County, at least 9,348 residents have tested positive for the virus and 104 have died. Yuba County, which shares a health office with Sutter, has reported 6,165 infections and 40 dead.
The lone hospital serving the Yuba-Sutter bi-county region — Adventist-Rideout in Marysville — had 11 hospitalized virus patients as of Tuesday’s update including three in the ICU. The hospital one week earlier had six virus patients including one in an ICU. Eleven marks its highest COVID-19 patient total since March 17.
This story was originally published April 27, 2021 at 7:29 AM.
