Tulare, Kings counties could escape purple COVID tier next week, and where Fresno stands
After months of stringent measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, two counties in the central San Joaquin Valley could finally escape the most-restrictive tier of limits on businesses and allow such activities as indoor dining and fitness workouts as early as next week.
Tulare County has been under purple Tier 1 of California’s color-coded Blueprint for a Safer Economy since the safety program was introduced last August. Kings County spent several weeks in red Tier 2 last fall before rising rates of new coronavirus cases pushed it back into the purple-tier restrictions.
Fresno, Madera and Merced counties remain in the purple tier and likely will have to wait at least another week.
Tier 1 represents “widespread” transmission of the novel coronavirus in a community, while Tier 2 denotes “substantial” risk of viral spread in a county.
On Friday, the California Department of Public Health announced the potential for the two counties, and 11 others throughout the state, to move into the less-restrictive red tier next Tuesday. The announcement came as the state reached a goal of providing at least 2 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to residents in some of California’s most socially and economically disadvantaged neighborhoods.
That vaccine benchmark triggered easing one of the key measures for counties to move from purple to red within the state’s framework, the number of new coronavirus cases surfacing each day as a rate per 100,000 residents in a county. That threshold is moving from a rate of seven new daily cases to an easier-to-achieve 10 cases.
Counties must also meet a threshold of less than 8% of residents tested for COVID-19 returning positive results over a seven-day period. Counties must meet or beat both the case-rate and testing positivity benchmarks for two straight weeks to be promoted to the red tier.
Both Tulare and Kings counties already meet the testing-positivity mark to move from purple to red, but were being held back by the case rate.
In a statement issued Friday afternoon, state health officials said they expect Kings and Tulare counties, as well as Lake, Monterey, Riverside, Sacramento, San Diego, San Joaquin, Santa Barbara, Sutter, Tehama, Ventura and Yuba counties, to be advanced into the red tier on Tuesday. Next week will be the second week for these counties to meet the red-tier requirements “if the data stays steady,” said Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of California’s Health & Human Services Agency.
Ghaly added that the official announcement of new tier assignments for those counties would come on Tuesday and take effect Wednesday.
Thirteen counties will move immediately from the purple to red tier because they already meet the relaxed threshold for two weeks as required by the state blueprint: Amador, Colusa, Contra Costa, Los Angeles, Mendocino, Mono, Orange, Placer, San Benito, San Bernardino, Siskiyou, Sonoma and Tuolumne.
Under the purple tier, some of the most notable limitations have included restaurants being allowed to only provide outdoor dining or to-go orders, and gyms and fitness clubs not authorized to have indoor operations.
In the red tier, restaurants can resume indoor dining at up to 25% of capacity, gyms can reopen their indoor workout spaces at up to 10% of capacity, and other types of businesses can reopen or expand their operations.
Mariposa County is the only local county that has progressed beyond the red tier. It was promoted this week to orange Tier 2, for “moderate” risk of spread, but it’s already had one week with its case rate in the range for yellow Tier, 4, the least-restrictive level of the state’s framework. To advance further, however, the county needs to spend two more weeks in the orange tier, and meet the benchmarks for the yellow tier for two consecutive weeks.
Gov. Gavin Newsom last week announced that 40% of the state’s vaccine allocations would be aimed at residents living in census tracts or ZIP codes that fall into the bottom 25% of the California Healthy Places Index. The index assesses neighborhoods on a 0-to-100 scale, considering factors such as economics, education, transportation, access to healthcare, housing, and air and water quality.
More than half of Valley residents in Fresno, Kings, Madera, Merced and Tulare counties reside in neighborhoods that fall into the bottom quartile, according to a Fresno Bee analysis of HPI data.
Connected with Newsom’s announcement was that the tier threshold for counties to move from the purple tier to red in the state’s blueprint would be relaxed once California achieved 2 million vaccine doses given to residents of areas statewide in that bottom HPI quartile. As of midday Friday, the number of shots statewide in those neighborhoods stood at 2,016,539, setting the stage for Friday’s shift.
“What this means practically is that California is making good strides on achieving the commitment to delivering doses to the hardest-hit communities across our state,” Ghaly told reporters Friday, “and making sure that our first line of protection is going to those places that have shouldered the greatest burden of disease.”
But as Ghaly said last fall when the blueprint program was introduced, counties can also move backward if case or testing rates go the wrong way.
“We continue to believe that the blueprint has some of the strongest public health protections in the nation,” Ghaly said Friday. “As we move forward, if an individual county or series of counties sees its case rate lift upward, we will of course continue to have the protection of the purple tier above a case rate of 10.”
Fresno coronavirus case rate
In the state’s most recent tier assessments on March 9, Tulare County’s new-case rate was 9.5 per 100,000 population per day for the week ending Feb. 27. Case rates in other Valley counties were 12.6 in Fresno County, 11.9 in Kings County, 11.4 in Madera County, and 14.8 in Merced County.
As recently as two months ago, none of the Valley counties were anywhere close to approaching the red-tier threshold, each at more than 70 new cases per day per 100,000 population in mid-January, during the peak of a winter surge of COVID-19 infections that also sent hospitalization and death rates soaring both in the Valley and statewide.
When California reaches 4 million shots in the low-HPI neighborhoods, the state’s blueprint tier thresholds will see additional change, with slight easing of the benchmarks for counties to move from red Tier 2 into orange Tier 3, representing “moderate” risk of viral spread, and from orange into yellow Tier 4, the least-restrictive level denoting “minimal” community transmission of the virus.
“We have our next milestone, but we have quite a bit of work ahead to get from 2 million to 4 million doses,” Ghaly said.
Because the relaxed purple-to-red threshold can accelerate counties’ progress within the blueprint, schools will also see a faster path to reopening for in-person instruction. “Schools that were anticipating a move from purple to red at the 7-case rate threshold can now make those moves at the 10-case-rate threshold,” Ghaly said Friday. “So we should see more schools across the state begin coming back or making plans to come back.”
Despite the tier framework, some businesses in Fresno County and across the Valley have opened in defiance of the purple-tier restrictions, including restaurants serving meals in their dining rooms and gyms opening their indoor facilities.
Counties have generally relied on voluntary compliance with the measures aimed at preventing the spread of COVID-19 from person to person.
“Tulare County recognized early on that communication with our business community was vital in ensuring they had the necessary information to operate a COVID safe business,” said Carrie Monteiro, a spokesperson for the Tulare County Health & Human Services Agency. In addition to establishing an email address for business owners to ask questions and seek feedback on their plans, the county also offered free on-site consultations to merchants to review their virus-prevention practices, Monteiro said.
“For those businesses that choose not to follow the state guidance for COVID safety, the county has a referral process that refers non-compliant businesses to the state enforcement strike team for follow-up,” Monteiro added. “The state strike teams then follow their own progressive enforcement practices to gain compliance.”
This story was originally published March 12, 2021 at 1:45 PM.
