When will Fresno exit purple tier COVID restrictions? We ran the numbers
Fresno County and the rest of the central San Joaquin Valley have seen remarkable declines in the number of new COVID-19 cases popping up each day over the past two months.
But as new cases drop from the peak of a vicious winter surge, the improvement hasn’t been enough yet under California’s coronavirus Blueprint for a Safer Economy to propel most of the region out of purple Tier 1 — the most restrictive level of limitations on businesses in the color-coded program. Tier 1 denotes that “widespread” transmission of the virus is continuing in a county.
As the weather improves and vaccine availability increases – and as Tulare County made its way out of the purple tier this week – the questions being raised with increasing frequency are: What’s it going to take for Fresno, Kings, Madera and Merced counties to make their way into red Tier 2, representing “substantial” viral spread? And when could we get there?
The answers depend on whether — and how rapidly — individual counties can continue reducing the number of new COVID-19 cases reported, as a daily rate per 100,000 residents. The “magic number” is an average of 10 new daily cases per 100,000 over the course of a week.
For Fresno County, and neighboring Kings, Madera and Merced counties, the earliest assignment to the red tier by the state Department of Public Health would be March 30 – and that’s only if any of the counties can get below a new-case rate of 10 each day per 100,000 population by next week’s state assessment on March 23. Counties have to meet or beat that benchmark for two straight weeks to advance into the less stringent tier.
How is Fresno County doing?
Throughout February, Fresno County looked like a cinch to reach the red tier by this time. The county was already meeting two other key measures used by the state in its weekly tier assignments, both dealing with the percentage of residents being tested for COVID-19 each week whose results were coming back positive for the virus. And the case rate was, in a relative sense, plummeting:
- Jan. 26: 58.0 average new daily cases per 100,000 residents, when a regional stay-at-home order was lifted for the San Joaquin Valley.
- Feb. 2: 41.1 average new daily cases per 100,000.
- Feb. 9: 30.3 average new daily cases per 100,000.
- Feb. 16: 22.8 average new daily cases per 100,000.
- Feb. 23: 16.6 average new daily cases per 100,000.
Since that point, however, progress has slowed to a crawl: a 15.6% decline to 14 cases per 100,000 by March 2, a 10% drop to 12.6 cases by March 9, and a 5.5% drop to 11.9 cases in the most recent update by the state on March 16. A trend line that was dropping sharply a few weeks ago now looks more like a flat line.
At that pace, even a March 30 promotion into red Tier 2 is no sure thing. To reach the 10-case threshold next week, when the state issues its next update on Tuesday, March 23 for the week ending March 13, Fresno County will need a 16% week-to-week decline. And it will need to stay at or below 10 for another week to move from purple to red.
How did Tulare County make it to red tier?
The picture for Fresno, Kings, Madera and Merced counties would be even more daunting if the purple-to-red threshold had not been relaxed earlier this month, when California achieved a goal of administering 2 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to residents in the most socially and economically disadvantaged parts of the state. Hitting that mark on March 12 prompted the state to move the new-case-rate bar from seven per 100,000 residents in a county to 10.
That allowed Tulare County, which last week was at a rate of 9.5 new daily cases, to get credit for one week under the new threshold. This week, with a rate of 7.8 cases, was the second week beating the mark, paving the way for Tulare County to allow businesses to operate under the red-tier rules.
Tulare County restaurants that had been restricted for months to either outdoor dining or take-out orders could reopen their dining rooms for indoor dining. Gyms could reopen for indoor fitness workouts. Retailers could expand from operating at only 25% capacity to 50%. Middle and high schools can start bringing students back into physical classrooms.
The situation in Merced County
Merced County, the third-most-populated county in the area behind Fresno and Tulare, remains the farthest from reaching the red tier, with a daily rate of 13.9 new cases per 100,000 residents in the state’s March 16 update.
Merced County peaked at a rate of more than 77 new cases per 100,000, but the rate sank steadily throughout late January and February to under 20 by Feb. 23. Over the past few weeks, though, progress has seemingly plateaued. It would take a drop of more than 28% in the rate – falling from 13.9 daily cases per 100,000 population to 10 daily cases – to reach the mark for a first week in the state’s March 23 assessment.
The greatest reduction over the past two weeks, however, has been a 10.3% drop from March 2 to March 9.
What’s holding counties back?
County health officers up and down the Valley continue to plead with residents to maintain the same kind of precautions that have been preached for the past year to slow the spread of the virus from person to person. That includes frequent hand washing, staying home if you’re sick, wearing a face covering to avoid spraying your respiratory droplets into the air around you, and maintaining physical distancing from other people when in public.
A sense of growing “pandemic fatigue” – people growing weary and impatient with the precautionary measures and sense of detachment from large groups of family and friends – is one of the big concerns.
“We cannot get lazy with our prevention measures. We all want to take off our masks and throw them away, but we can’t do that yet,” Joe Prado, community health division manager for the Fresno County Department of Public Health, said earlier this month.
Dr. Rais Vohra, Fresno County’s interim public health officer, said recently that despite the falling case rates, “we are not out of the woods yet.”
“Hopefully there’s enough public sentiment that understands how important safety is,” Vohra added. “I think there are enough people who look around and say it’s just common sense to protect the most vulnerable” by continuing to follow the safety measures until a critical mass of the population is vaccinated.
And while acknowledging the hardship faced by businesses that are not allowed to open indoors, if at all, under the purple-tier restrictions, health officials are urging businesses to comply with the rules to help reduce the chances for the virus to be transmitted.
Throughout the Valley, some restaurateurs have reopened their dining rooms to serve patrons and gyms opened their indoor facilities for fitness workouts — in violation of the state’s blueprint tier.
“It’s a matter of some sensitivity because obviously I trust that those businesses are trying to do the best by their staff and their customers and just trying to keep the lights on,” Vohra said last week. “I don’t think they’re intentionally trying to commit crimes.”
“But on the other hand, everyone needs to know that whenever we have widespread community transmission — that’s the technical definition of the purple tier — that indoor operations are still considered higher risk,” he added.
An article last fall in the journal Nature, reporting on a study of travel habits during business shutdowns and stay-at-home orders last spring in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, stated that certain types of indoor places that people go and linger for longer periods of time — such as restaurants — were likely to result in greater risk of coronavirus infection than others as a result of lifting pandemic restrictions.
As of Tuesday, only 11 of California’s 58 counties are in purple Tier 1; 42 are now in red Tier 2; four are in orange Tier 3, representing “moderate” risk of spreading the virus; and one county is in yellow Tier 4, denoting “minimal” risk.
This story was originally published March 19, 2021 at 7:00 AM.
