Announcement delayed for state’s coronavirus tier system. Stanislaus cutting it close
Citing Tuesday’s national election, California health officials postponed an update on coronavirus tier assignments until Wednesday. The weekly updates assigning counties to different levels of COVID-19 restrictions are usually released on Tuesdays.
Dr. Julie Vaishampayan, health officer for Stanislaus County, told the Board of Supervisors the county’s daily case rate was right at the key metric of 7 per 100,000 population. The county needs to stay below that limit to meet criteria for the red tier, which places lighter restrictions on restaurants, retail shopping areas, fitness centers and worship services.
County leaders have feared that recent case numbers, in the 40s and 50s per day, won’t meet the red criteria in this week’s update. If the county is above the 7 per 100,000 case rate for two consecutive weeks, the county could fall back to the most restrictive purple tier.
Vaishampayan told supervisors the state has added some flexibility to the two-week rule. The California Department of Public Health can allow counties to maintain their current tier status if they have shown improvement in the past 10 days in safeguarding the public against COVID-19 illness.
Any fallback to the purple tier would more likely happen in the second half of November.
This story was originally published November 3, 2020 at 12:51 PM.
