13 California counties move to looser COVID-19 tiers. El Dorado, 3 others miss out
Thirteen California counties with a combined population of more than 17 million residents advanced to less restrictive tiers within the state’s reopening framework in a weekly update Tuesday, while four others that were positioned for possible promotion missed out.
All five purple-tier counties that were eligible to move — Fresno, Glenn, Kings, Madera and Yuba counties — promoted into the red tier, allowing a number of indoor business openings including restaurant dining rooms, gyms and movie theaters.
Eight other counties advanced from red to orange: Alameda, Butte, Colusa, Los Angeles, Modoc, Orange, Santa Cruz and Tuolumne. That move will loosen capacity limits from red-tier restriction levels and also allows a few more types of indoor entertainment businesses to open.
All restriction changes take effect starting Wednesday, unless a county’s health office chooses to impose its own tighter guidelines.
Four other red-tier counties that entered this week eligible to improve, having recorded the first of two required consecutive weeks in last week’s update, did not advance because their COVID-19 rates increased back above orange-tier thresholds: Calaveras, El Dorado, Imperial and Napa each had too many new cases.
However, there is an upcoming rule change that could retroactively place three of those counties into the red tier in the near future.
When the state reaches 4 million doses administered to Californians in the bottom quartile of its “Healthy Places Index,” the California Department of Public Health says it will raise the orange-tier cutoff from four daily COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents to six per 100,000.
The other requirements will stay the same. CDPH made a similar change for the red-tier cutoffs when the state hit 2 million doses, on March 12.
Calaveras recorded 6.5 daily cases per 100,000 in Tuesday’s update, but El Dorado, Imperial and Napa all ranged between four and six while also meeting the test positivity standards for the orange tier, meaning they’d meet the adjusted requirements once they change.
The bottom quartile is at 3.46 million doses, and the total has been increasing at a pace that it may reach 4 million within about a week. Once it does hit that milestone, CDPH will provide updated tier assignments for counties the following day and will make retroactive changes.
So if the vaccine equity requirement is hit before the next weekly update set for April 6, El Dorado, Imperial and Napa will all likely advance to orange.
Three counties still in the purple tier
Inyo, San Joaquin and Merced counties remain in the purple tier. San Joaquin and Merced notched the first of two consecutive weeks meeting red-tier requirements needed to advance, meaning they could move to red April 6 at the earliest.
Inyo County did not meet red requirements and can advance no sooner than April 13.
Purple tier restrictions are the tightest available within the tier framework. With Tuesday’s updates, only three counties accounting for less than 3% of California’s 40 million residents are still in purple.
Leaving the purple tier has important implications for K-12 public school reopenings starting in April, as laid out in a deal struck by state lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom.
What about the yellow tier?
Three of the nine counties that entered the week already in the orange tier recorded one week of meeting yellow-tier criteria — Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo, all in the Bay Area.
Of those three, though, only San Mateo is eligible to move to the yellow tier as early as next week, because counties must stay in any given tier at least three weeks before advancing. Marin and San Francisco have only been orange since last week.
Only California’s two least populous counties, Alpine and Sierra, are already in the yellow tier.
None of the state’s 58 counties were demoted or moved closer to demotion by failing to meet the criteria for their current tier levels.
How soon could Sacramento go orange?
Sacramento County remains in the red tier.
County health officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye during a weekly news briefing last Thursday said “probably sometime late April” would be her best guess for when the county could move to orange, though she said a variety of factors could change that timeline.
The three criteria for advancing from red to orange are a daily case rate below four per 100,000 residents, an overall test positivity rate below 5% and positivity below 5.2% in the county’s lowest HPI quartile ZIP codes, all for two straight weeks.
In the state’s tier assessment last week, Sacramento County recorded a case rate of 7.4 per 100,000, positivity of 2.9% and health equity positivity of 4.2%. This week, those rates were 7.5 per 100,000, 3.1% and 4.1%, respectively.
That means state data show Sacramento’s numbers have basically plateaued since last week’s update, and cases will need to trim down some more for the county to go orange.
Cases may been trending up slightly in Sacramento County. On its own health dashboard, Sacramento’s seven-day case rate was reported at 7.2 per 100,000 for the week ending March 20, but rose to 8.3 per 100,000 five days later.
CDPH also looks at COVID-19 numbers on a longer delay than most counties do, to account for possible data reporting errors, so the recent increase may be reflected in next week’s update from CDPH.
It remains too early to tell whether that increase is a small setback or the start of a longer-term spike in cases, but in either case it is very difficult to forecast when the rate might fall below six.
California numbers strong, but surges surface elsewhere
California is attempting gradual reopening from coronavirus closures, which have now been in effect in varying forms for more than a year in response to the highly contagious disease.
The state is doing so as hundreds of thousands of residents are being vaccinated against the virus on a daily basis, and as the state is boasting one of the lowest infection rates in the U.S.
A New York Times database showed California with the second-lowest case rate per capita over the past week of any state, higher than only Arkansas.
California’s test positivity rate, reported Tuesday by CDPH at 1.6% for the preceding week, continues to decline from an already-record low since testing began. That rate is almost half the positivity rate from the previous period between surges, in October, when it bottomed out at 3%.
However, at the national level, federal officials expressed concern Monday about a surge that is developing quickly across several states. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, came close to tears as she spoke of “impending doom” and progress fighting the pandemic being undone.
“I am asking you to just hold on a little longer,” she said.
With about 70% of Californians still not having received a first dose of vaccine, the Golden State is by no means in the clear from another spike or surge in cases.
On the other hand, more than 77% of Californians ages 65 and older have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 51% are fully vaccinated, the CDC reported Monday.
Because older adults have been known since the earliest weeks of the pandemic to be far more vulnerable to the disease than younger populations, health officials are hopeful that even if another surge in cases does develop, hospitalizations and deaths will not spike as dramatically as previous surges.
California’s hospitals are in fairly good shape. CDPH reported Tuesday that there were about 2,250 patients hospitalized with confirmed cases of COVID-19 including 561 in intensive care units, down from winter peaks of about 22,000 hospitalized and almost 5,000 in ICUs.
The latest reported ICU total is California’s lowest in almost a full calendar year — dating back to late March 2020.
As they have done on many occasions during previous periods of reopening, and with yet another major holiday approaching in the form of Easter this coming Sunday, local health officials in the Sacramento region are preaching vigilance and adherence to health protocols.
“When we get impatient with COVID is when we get into trouble,” Yolo County health officer Dr. Aimee Sisson told The Bee earlier this month.
To date, more than 3.56 million Californians have tested positive for COVID-19 and at least 57,788 have died from the virus, according to CDPH.
Latest vaccine numbers
Health officials and governments are also expecting a substantial ramping up of vaccine supply in April and hope that this will help avert another surge.
In major expansions, CDPH says Californians ages 50 and older will become eligible for the vaccine starting this coming Thursday, and all Californians 16 and older will become eligible April 15.
CDPH reported Tuesday that providers statewide have administered more than 17.6 million doses to date, about 79% of the 22.4 million doses delivered by manufacturers.
More than 6.39 million are now fully vaccinated in California, with an additional 5.39 million partially vaccinated, CDPH says. That means approximately 16% of California’s total population, and 21% of its adults, are fully vaccinated; and 29% of Californians including 38% of adults have had at least one dose.
California is set to receive more than 2.1 million total doses this week from the three authorized manufacturers — Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Moderna — with the expectation that the state could be hitting 3 million doses a week by May or early June, Newsom said in a news conference last week.
Sacramento area: Six-county death toll passes 2,300
The six-county capital region of Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer, Yolo, Sutter and Yuba counties has reported more than 156,000 lab-confirmed cases and at least 2,320 virus deaths over the course of the pandemic.
Sacramento County has reported 97,617 cases and 1,603 resident deaths from COVID-19. The county has reported 21 deaths in the past week, compared to 34 the previous week.
The countywide hospitalized total has risen, from 86 reported March 23 to 97 on Tuesday, according to state data, with the ICU total moving from 19 to 20.
Placer County health officials have confirmed a total of 20,888 infections and 272 deaths. Placer has reported 24 deaths in the past week, up from 16 the previous week.
State data on Tuesday showed 27 virus patients in Placer hospitals including six in ICUs, down from 32 and seven compared to one week earlier.
Yolo County has reported 13,218 total cases and 196 deaths. The county confirmed five deaths in the past week, up from one the previous week.
Yolo had six hospitalized virus patients as of Tuesday’s state data update, including two in ICUs, up from two hospitalized and one in an ICU on March 23.
El Dorado County has reported 9,441 positive test results and 107 deaths. The county has not reported any new deaths in the past week.
State data on Tuesday showed El Dorado with two hospitalized virus patients, both in ICUs, up from one non-ICU patient early last week.
In Sutter County, at least 9,134 residents have tested positive for the virus and 102 have died. Officials have not reported any deaths in the past week.
Yuba County, which shares a health office with Sutter, has reported 5,981 infections and 40 dead. Yuba also has not reported any deaths in the past week.
The lone hospital serving the Yuba-Sutter bi-county region — Adventist-Rideout in Marysville — had four hospitalized virus patients as of Tuesday’s update, down from six on March 23, with the ICU total still at one.
This story was originally published March 30, 2021 at 8:33 AM with the headline "13 California counties move to looser COVID-19 tiers. El Dorado, 3 others miss out."
