Fresno remains in purple COVID tier. How close is region to easing business restrictions?
It has been about three months since restaurants in Fresno and much of the surrounding central San Joaquin Valley have been allowed to serve diners indoors under California’s color-coded system of precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
And based on the latest update by the California Department of Public Health, it’s likely to be weeks more before they can do so.
There have been notable exceptions, to be sure. Some restaurants have opted, either quietly or loudly, to ignore the rules. But many establishments continue to abide by the health measures in place as Fresno, Kings, Madera, Merced and Tulare counties remain in purple Tier 1 of the state’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy.
Tier 1 is the most stringent of four tiers in the blueprint, representing “widespread” risk of transmitting the novel coronavirus within the community based on the rate of new cases and testing positivity rates in a county.
On Tuesday, the state reported that Fresno County experienced more than 30 new confirmed coronavirus infections each day per 100,000 residents from Jan. 24 through Jan. 30. That’s a marked improvement from just four weeks ago, when the reported rate of new cases was 76 per 100,000.
But the latest estimate remains more than four times higher than the threshold of seven new daily cases per 100,000 that the county must reach – and maintain – before it can graduate into the less-restrictive Tier 3, in which limited indoor dining is permitted in restaurants and other businesses can conduct indoor operations with capacity limits.
Under the purple tier, restaurants are allowed to only offer outdoor dining or to-go orders; gyms and health clubs can only operate outdoors, and retailers from mom-and-pop boutiques to big-box chains are limited to operating at 25% of their occupancy capacity. Churches, synagogues, temples, mosques and other houses of worship can be open indoors at 25% capacity, after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this month that overturned California’s rule barring indoor services in the pandemic but leaving in place the state’s ability to limit capacity.
In addition to capacity limits, other rules for businesses are to require staff and customers to wear face masks and practice physical distancing to minimize opportunities for the virus to be spread from one person to another.
After a regional stay-at-home order imposed by the state in early December was lifted a couple of weeks ago, Valley counties resumed their place in the tier system based on their rates of new cases and testing positivity.
What do the tiers represent?
The state’s tier system is comprised of:
Purple Tier 1 – “Widespread” risk of spread in counties with an adjusted rate of new daily cases of more than seven per 100,000 residents over the course of a week or more than 8% of residents who test for the virus showing positive results. On Tuesday, 53 of California’s 58 counties are in Tier 1.
Red Tier 2 – “Substantial” risk of spread in counties with a rate of four to seven new daily cases per 100,000 and a testing positivity rate between 5% and 8%. Two counties – Mariposa and Del Norte – are in this range now.
Orange Tier 3 – “Moderate” risk of viral spread in counties in which the daily new-case rate is between one and four per 100,000 residents and a testing positivity rate between 2% and 5%. Three counties are currently in this tier: Alpine, Sierra and Trinity, all sparsely populated rural counties in Northern California.
Yellow Tier 4 – “Minimal” risk of spreading the virus in counties with a daily new-case rate under one per 100,000, and testing positivity of less than 2%. None of California’s counties are currently in this least-restrictive tier.
Positive COVID-19 tests
In addition to new cases, the percentage of a county’s residents getting tested for COVID-19 whose results come back positive for the virus is a second key component of the state’s tier assignments. To move from the purple tier to red, positive test results can represent no more than 8% of all tests in the previous week.
Tuesday’s report from the state showed that Fresno County’s positivity rate in testing was 9.7%, down, exactly half by percentage points what it was a month ago, and less than two percentage points above the red-tier threshold.
To move from the purple tier to red, a county needs to meet or beat the thresholds for both new daily cases and testing positivity and remain below those levels thresholds for two consecutive weeks before the lower restrictions take effect.
Positive trends, but ...
The trends are positive, but health officials are wary about the prospects for new cases and more positive tests to increase as people take advantage of more businesses being open after the stay-at-home order was lifted. Under the regional order, a range of businesses were supposed to be closed that are now open under the purple tier. While outdoor dining at restaurants is one of the most notable, barbershops, beauty salons, nail shops and other personal-care businesses are among those that could resume business.
Dr. Rais Vohra, interim health officer for the Fresno County Department of Public Health, said that while rates of new cases and positive tests are down, hospitals continue to feel the effects of a winter surge that was likely driven by gatherings of families and friends over the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s holidays.
He expressed fears for a “spring surge” of cases as economic and social activity picks up.
“It’s entirely possible that we could have a recrudescence of infections and transmissions,” Vohra said Tuesday in a media briefing with reporters. “There’s a lot of unknowns related to new strains that are coming out, and certainly as people become more active and start mixing and gathering more, that transmission might go up.”
On Tuesday, hospitals across Fresno County were caring for almost 370 patients with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19, down from peaks of more than close to 700 in early January, but still more than three times the number of inpatients in early November, before the holiday season.
Of the hospitalized coronavirus patients, 91 were sick enough to require treatment in intensive-care units across the county. Between COVID-19 patients and people being treated for other serious illnesses and conditions, the county was left with 15 available ICU beds to handle new patients. Ordinarily, Fresno County hospitals have a licensed capacity of 149 intensive-care beds.
And in a deadly pandemic that is blamed for the deaths of almost 1,260 people in Fresno County since claiming its first victim last April, nearly 550 of the fatalities – more than four out of every 10 deaths – have been reported just since Jan. 1.
