SLO County could drop to yellow COVID tier next week. Here’s what that means
San Luis Obispo County could drop into the lowest tier of the state’s coronavirus reopening plan next week — just one week before the state reopens fully and those tier restrictions become defunct.
On Tuesday, the California Department of Public Health reported San Luis Obispo County has an adjusted case rate of just 1.5 cases per 100,000 residents.
That’s the county’s lowest number since the state began reporting case rates in September.
Combined with an equally low positivity rate of 0.7% and health equity rate of 0.6%, this means SLO County is in line to go from the orange tier to yellow tier next week, as long as those numbers stay in the yellow as of next week’s reckoning.
If that happens, SLO County will remain in the least-restrictive tier of the state’s Blueprint for a Safer Reopening for just one week, until the state fully reopens on June 15.
In the yellow tier, where coronavirus spread is considered “minimal,” most indoor business operations are allowed with some modifications, including increased capacity.
To date, 21,327 cases of COVID-19 and 261 deaths have been confirmed in San Luis Obispo County, along with 733 total hospitalizations and 121 ICU cases.
Paso Robles has the most confirmed cases of any local city with 4,182, followed by San Luis Obispo at 4,035.
The number of positive cases has plunged in recent weeks with only two new cases on Tuesday and a total of 12 over the last four days.
A total of 86,847 county residents have received at least one vaccine does,with 76,417 fully vaccinated.
Other California counties move to looser coronavirus tiers
Tuesday’s statewide numbers were the penultimate weekly update to the state’s COVID-19 tier list, with eight counties moving into looser restriction levels based on declining coronavirus activity.
Sacramento, Nevada, San Joaquin and Solano counties departed the tighter red tier and moved to the looser orange level.
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.
Moving from orange to yellow loosens capacity limits further.
The threshold between red and orange is a daily case rate of 6 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.
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.
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%.
This story was originally published June 1, 2021 at 2:03 PM with the headline "SLO County could drop to yellow COVID tier next week. Here’s what that means."
