Before next reopening, Fresno County required to meet equity metric for most vulnerable
Fresno County will have to meet the needs of its most vulnerable population before it can move to the next tier under California’s COVID-19 Blueprint for a Safer Economy.
On Tuesday, the county moved into the red Tier 2, allowing for a safe and limited reopening of more businesses. It had been in the purple Tier 1, which is the most restrictive level.
Fresno County Interim Health Officer Dr. Rais Vohra, during a media briefing Friday afternoon, told reporters the state had shared a new equity metric with county officials.
The new metric “is dedicated to making sure that the most vulnerable members of our population get the resources that they need,” he told reporters.
The new metric will be evaluated, in part, based on the county’s four census tracts and will use a mapping tool called the Healthy Places Index. Vohra said county officials are trying to understand better all aspects of the new metric and the mapping tool that will be used, which he described as “a little complicated.”
The mapping tool was developed by the Public Health Institute, based in Oakland, Vohra said.
Charles Margulis, press relations and media specialist at the Public Health Institute, said the mapping tool was created by the Public Health Alliance of Southern California, a program of the Public Health Institute.
“They (the Public Health Institute) are fully dedicated to public health, and they do a lot of programs and initiatives related to keeping people healthy, really supporting vulnerable populations,” Vohra said. “That’s the mapping (the Healthy Places Index) the state is using with the equity metric, and so we’ll be able to see exactly which of our census tracts are considered in the lowest quartile.”
Having to meet this additional equity metric means that not only does Fresno County’s average positivity rate has to meet the threshold to move forward into the next tier — orange Tier 3 — but the county’s lowest quartile has to as well, he said.
Under the orange Tier 3 level, counties must only record 1 to 3.9 daily new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people and have a positivity rate between 2% and 4.9%.
“We will have to meet the orange metrics for the whole county, and then our lowest quartile census tracts will also need to meet the orange metrics in terms of case positivity rate,” Vohra said. “I’m confident that we can get there. Part of the equity metric is telling the counties that they need to invest more testing resources, laboratory resources, education resources into the most vulnerable populations in their counties.”
Fresno County already started doing that in several different ways, which makes Vohra optimistic about the new requirement, he said.
Last week, the Fresno County Board of Supervisors announced a $3 million spending package to help several of the county’s small rural communities. The money came from the CARES Act funding the county received to respond to costs incurred by COVID-19.
Since the pandemic landed in Fresno in March, a total of 28,796 cases have been reported, and 399 people have died as of Friday.
This story was originally published October 2, 2020 at 5:59 PM.
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