8 California counties including Sacramento move to looser COVID restriction tiers
California health officials on Tuesday morning gave their penultimate weekly update to the state’s COVID-19 tier list, promoting eight counties into looser restriction levels based on declining coronavirus activity.
Sacramento County as well as Nevada, San Joaquin and Solano counties departed the tighter red tier and moved to the looser orange level. Sacramento went orange for the first time since the tier structure was introduced last August.
Marin, Monterey, San Benito and Ventura counties all moved from orange to the loosest tier, yellow.
All eight counties that had entered this week eligible to move to a looser tier due to low case numbers last week ended up making the move.
Promotion from red to orange loosens current capacity limits, allows a few more types of indoor businesses to open and permits larger crowd sizes at both indoor and outdoor events. Neighboring Placer County got the promotion last week.
Moving from orange to yellow loosens capacity limits further.
The threshold between red and orange is a daily case rate of six or fewer per 100,000 residents, and counties must meet that requirement two straight weeks to be promoted. Sacramento recorded 5.5 per 100,000 last week and 4.4 in Tuesday’s update, according to the California Department of Public Health.
The tier framework is set to be retired June 15, the same date California will adopt recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on face coverings, effectively ending the mask mandate for the fully vaccinated except in certain limited circumstances such as on public transportation.
Because of the two-week requirement, Sacramento County will now spend the next two weeks before the June 15 end date in orange.
Local health officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye has said multiple times in recent weeks that the county does not plan to impose its own tighter restrictions after that date, even if virus transmission rates are slightly higher in the capital region than California as a whole.
Four counties remain in the red tier. Two of them — Del Norte and Shasta — again did not meet the requirements and therefore will remain in red until June 15. The other two — Stanislaus and Yuba — met orange-tier criteria this week and could therefore enter that tier June 8.
The strictest tier, purple, kept restaurant dining rooms, gyms, movie theaters and several other types of establishments closed for indoor operations. No county has been in purple since early April.
All tier changes announced Tuesday officially go into effect Wednesday.
Kasirye said last month that even if the county were to exit the red tier a couple of weeks before the end of the tier format, those extra days could make a difference for local businesses affected by the state health order. She said it would also reflect progress being made in driving down the local case rate.
“We want to get as low as possible when we get to June 15,” she said.
Even more record lows for COVID-19 activity in California
CDPH on Monday and Tuesday reported California’s test positivity at 0.7% for the prior seven days — the lowest rate for the entire pandemic, improving on a record of 0.8% set early last week. Positivity, a measure of the level of spread of COVID-19, topped 17% during the worst of California’s winter surge.
Virus hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 are also at or near their lowest points since the start of the health crisis.
The state on Monday reported there were 1,057 confirmed cases in hospital beds statewide, the fewest since CDPH started keeping track in March 2020, increasing slightly to 1,069 on Tuesday. Just 266 were in intensive care. Those numbers peaked in January at nearly 22,000 hospitalized and close to 5,000 in intensive care units.
State health officials report the latest fatality rate at an average of 19 deaths per day as of early May. The rolling one-week death rate peaked at more than 670 per day in early 2021.
More than 3.68 million Californians have tested positive for COVID-19 and at least 62,011 have died since the start of the health crisis, according to CDPH.
Over 70% of adults at least partially vaccinated
Gov. Gavin Newsom in a tweet on Memorial Day announced that 70% of California adults have now received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
In total, about 17.4 million Californians are fully vaccinated with either two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, according to CDPH figures updated Tuesday. Another 4.4 million were partially vaccinated with one dose of Pfizer or Moderna.
That total, of 21.7 million who are partially or fully vaccinated, equates to about 55% of the state’s 39.5 million residents. With the vaccine only authorized for those ages 12 and older, about 64% of the roughly 34 million eligible Californians are at least partially vaccinated.
According to the CDC, California’s 12-and-older vaccination rate ranks 12th among the 50 states. Vermont ranked first at 80% of eligible residents vaccinated; Mississippi came last at 40%.
Sacramento-area activity slowing, but death toll near 2,500
The six-county capital region of Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer, Yolo, Sutter and Yuba counties has reported close to 170,000 lab-confirmed cases and at least 2,474 virus deaths over the course of the pandemic.
Sacramento County has reported 106,473 cases and 1,709 resident deaths from COVID-19, last updated Tuesday with numbers from the three-day Memorial Day weekend.
The countywide hospitalized total has been declining. The tally dipped Monday to 64 patients, the county’s lowest point since June 2020, and was reported Tuesday at 69, state data show. The ICU total grew slightly, from 16 to 18 in the past week.
Hospitalizations in Sacramento peaked the week of Christmas, when nearly 520 were concurrently hospitalized, about one-fifth of the county’s licensed bed total.
Placer County health officials have confirmed a total of 23,004 infections and 297 deaths through last Friday.
State data on Tuesday showed 29 virus patients in Placer hospitals, the same as one week earlier, with the ICU count dropping from six to four.
Yolo County has reported 13,982 total cases and 208 deaths.
Yolo had two virus patients hospitalized as of Tuesday’s state data update, neither of them in intensive care, compared to three hospitalized patients including two in ICUs one week earlier.
El Dorado County has reported 10,296 positive test results and 113 deaths.
State data showed El Dorado with three hospitalized patients, down from four one week earlier, with the ICU count reported at one each day.
In Sutter County, at least 9,527 residents have tested positive for the virus and 106 have died. Yuba County, which shares a health office with Sutter, has reported 6,371 total infections and 41 dead.
Adventist-Rideout in Marysville — Yuba-Sutter bi-county region’s lone hospital — had four hospitalized virus patients as of Tuesday’s update, down from five a week earlier. The ICU total held at zero.
This story was originally published June 1, 2021 at 7:28 AM.
