Santa Barbara County could move to yellow COVID tier next week. What does that mean?

Santa Barbara County met the criteria for the least-restrictive yellow tier of the state’s COVID-19 reopening framework for the first time on Tuesday.

The county reported an adjusted rate of 1.3 cases per 100,000 residents, and a 0.7% testing positivity rate, both of which fall below the threshold for the yellow tier.

The adjusted case rate dropped significantly from the week prior, when the county was just shy of qualifying for the yellow tier with a reported 2.0 case rate.

If the county meets the yellow tier criteria again in next week’s tier assessment, it can officially advance to the yellow tier — although that would happen just a week before the entire tier system is eliminated on June 15.

Neighboring Ventura County advanced to the yellow tier on Tuesday, while Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties have to wait at least one more week.

Advancing to the yellow tier comes with increased capacity limits for restaurants, retail and other business sectors.

Santa Barbara County Public Health officials reported 10 new cases of COVID-19 since Friday.

Daily numbers were not reported over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, and the data for Saturday through Monday were reported on Tuesday.

There was one new case reported Saturday, two cases on Sunday, four cases on Monday and three cases on Tuesday.

Of the new cases reported since Friday, four were from the Santa Barbara area, and three were from Santa Maria. The Lompoc Valley and Isla Vista each added one new case, and one case was pending geographic location.

There were only 28 people still considered infectious in the county on Tuesday, a number that dropped by 21 since Friday.

This is the lowest daily number of active cases reported since the earliest days of the pandemic, according to data tracking done by Noozhawk.

The county went through the entire month of May without any additional COVID-19-related deaths, but the first death since April 30 was reported on Tuesday.

The person who died was a Santa Maria resident in the 50-to-69 age group who had underlying health conditions, according to the Public Health Department.

The county’s cumulative COVID-19 death toll now stands at 451.

There were six people recovering from the virus in local hospitals on Tuesday, including three in intensive-care units.

County hospitals were operating at a 50% ICU capacity, but COVID-19 patients only occupied 3.9% of the available staffed ICU beds.

There have been 34,498 confirmed cases throughout the county since the pandemic began, and 32,929 people have since recovered.