Stanislaus maintains secure hold in coronavirus red tier. One county still in purple
Stanislaus County remained securely in the red tier of the state’s coronavirus reopening strategy Tuesday.
The county has spent three weeks in the tier category for counties with “substantial” spread of COVID-19 illness, which allows more flexibility for restaurants, retail stores, fitness centers, yoga studios and other businesses.
California is aiming for June 15 to fully reopen its economy after more than a year of battling the coronavirus pandemic. On Monday, Stanislaus County’s Health Services Agency reported 74 additional COVID-19 cases and two deaths, pushing the death toll to 1,020 since April 2020.
In a weekly state review, Stanislaus County’s adjusted case rate was 10.1 percent per 100,000 population, just above the threshold for red tier. The county continued to meet the red criteria with test positivity data of 4.6 percent for the entire county and 4.2 percent in underserved neighborhoods.
Keeping those two testing metrics under 5 percent assures Stanislaus remains one of the 21 red tier counties in California. The state has 33 counties in the orange or moderate tier and 3 counties in yellow, which indicates minimal transmission of the virus.
Merced is the only county remaining in the state’s most restrictive purple tier. Merced’s daily case rate of 10.1 per 100,000 is a decimal point above the red tier requirement. Its testing positivity of 4.4 percent would qualify the county for red status, but its 5.4 percent positive test rate in underserved communities is slightly too high.
The county, which has dealt with the tightest coronavirus restrictions for more than 20 weeks, needs to have improved numbers for two straight weeks to leave the red tier behind.
California, as a whole, is seeing low transmission of the coronavirus including 2,645 news cases Sunday and testing positivity of 1.5 percent.
