Los Angeles County Qualifies For Widespread Reopenings

LOS ANGELES, CA — Once the epicenter of the nation's coronavirus outbreak, Los Angeles is now the first Southern California County to qualify for the state's least restrictive tier for reopenings thanks to plummeting COVID-19 rates. Notably, that means a reawakening of LA's famed nightlife after a year of pandemic closures.

Los Angeles County officially qualified Tuesday to move into the yellow tier of the state's blueprint for reopenings. County health officials plan to issue an order regulating wider reopenings Wednesday, and long-shuttered businesses can open their doors as early as Thursday.

It's the culmination of a herculean, year-long effort to subdue the coronavirus outbreak locally, a hard-fought battle with a death toll of 23,914. For the better part of the year, Angelenos faced some of the most restrictive shutdown orders in the state and nation. With a densely packed and more vulnerable population, Los Angeles took a more restrictive approach than many of its neighboring counties. Los Angeles County imposed early mask mandates, and restaurants, bars and schools remain closed longer than in most Southern California communities.

The approach was not without controversy, as the shutdown wore on, protests erupted over mask mandates and closures, and health officials faced death threats. But county leaders credit the community with following health guidelines and looking out for their neighbors to get to this polint.

"This new tier matches the sunny optimism of the season. Now it's up to all of us to keep up the good work," The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors said in a joint statement. "It's never been easier to get vaccinated, and that is the single most important action you can take to protect yourself, your family and your community. Continuing to make smart choices now moves us closer to fully enjoying all the wonderful things that Los Angeles County has to offer."

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Entering the yellow tier will primarily allow higher capacity limits at most businesses. Under state guidelines, fitness centers, cardrooms, wineries and breweries, for instance, could increase indoor attendance to 50% of capacity, up from the current 25%; bars could open indoors at 25%; outdoor venues such as Dodger Stadium could increase capacity to 67%, up from the current 33%; and amusement parks could allow 35%, up from 25%.

Counties are permitted to impose tougher restrictions than the state allows, and Los Angeles County has done so occasionally during the pandemic. But Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Monday the county plans to largely align with state yellow-tier guidelines.

Speaking to the Board of Supervisors Tuesday, Ferrer said that despite the easing restrictions, residents will need to continue adhering to basic infection-control measures. She noted that the eased restrictions "will still require safety modifications, including masking, distancing and infection control to keep reducing the risk of transmission."

"These standard public health practices remain essential until we have many more individuals vaccinated," she said.

Supervisor Hilda Solis echoed that sentiment, saying that while the advance to the yellow tier is encouraging, precautions are still essential.

"We still have a lot more work to do," she said.

Toward that end, health officials have been shifting the approach to vaccinating as many residents as possible, trading mass vaccination sites for mobile clinic outreach, appointment-free walk-in clinics and shifting dosages to local pharmacies.

Ferrer noted last week that there had been a decline in vaccination rates. She provided figures Monday showing that for the week ending April 23, 611,592 doses were administered in the county. Last week, however, only 467,134 doses were administered, representing a 24% drop.

She said "vaccine hesitancy" cannot be blamed entirely for the drop, although it does play a role. There are also issues with people having easy access to vaccination sites or an ability to get there. Mobile-vaccination efforts have been ramping up in an effort to reach more residents, and most vaccination sites are offering shots without an advance appointment.

"There are some other issues we do need to pay attention to," she said. "People really need to have access to the kind of information they're going to find helpful to be able to make a good decision. I've said all along the job of public health, we're not sitting here ordering people to get vaccinated. We want people to feel very comfortable that the vaccines are safe and they're super-effective.

"... I do think there is a small group of people that really don't want to get vaccinated. At this point, that group of people is unlikely to feel comfortable coming in right now to get vaccinated. And so, for those folks, please take your time. We have some urgency here because the more people that get vaccinated, the less the risks are of both known and unknown variants of concern taking hold here and getting us back a place where more people are dying, more people are in hospitals and we have more cases.

"But we're not here to force people to go and get vaccinated. We're here to present a lot of information to help you see and understand how powerful these vaccines are, how much of a difference it makes."

As of April 30, just more than 8 million doses of vaccine had been administered in Los Angeles County, including roughly 5 million first doses and 3 million second doses. Ferrer said that roughly 37% of the county's eligible population is fully vaccinated, meaning they have received both doses of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine. She said 65% of residents aged 65 and older are fully vaccinated.

Health officials have previously indicated that the county needs to get to an 80% vaccination rate to reach so-called "herd immunity." But Ferrer said Monday she is less focused on that 80% figure as she is about getting accurate information out about the effectiveness of the vaccines and making it easier for people to get them.

"I'm not as much worried about what's the number for herd immunity, and do we get there and what that concept really needs to mean, as I am about we've got a powerful vaccine, we're hopeful that more and more people will continue to come and get vaccinated and (we) want to make that as easy as possible," she said.

Weekly statistics released by the state Tuesday showed the county's rate of daily new COVID-19 infections had fallen to 1.6 per 100,000 residents, down from 1.9 last week. Reaching the yellow tier of the state's Blueprint for a Safer Economy requires a county to have a new-case rate less than 2 per 100,000 residents, and maintain that level for two consecutive weeks.

The county on Monday announced zero COVID-19 deaths for the second day in a row -- although the numbers are likely due to a reporting lag from the weekend.

COVID-19 case and death numbers are traditionally low on Sundays and Mondays, but the back-to-back days of zero deaths still offered a glimmer of hope about a waning of the pandemic's deadly toll.

"We're hopeful that deaths will continue to remain very low in the weeks ahead," Ferrer said.

She said that while reporting lags are likely responsible for the lack of any deaths being reported Sunday and Monday, the numbers of daily fatalities have been declining. Additionally, she said, the county is currently averaging four or five deaths per day, when those fatalities are traced back to the dates on which they actually occurred.

With no deaths reported Monday, the county's COVID-19 death toll from throughout the pandemic remained at 23,914.

The county reported 255 new COVID cases on Monday, lifting the overall number to 1,233,985.

According to state figures, there were 400 people hospitalized due to COVID in the county as of Tuesday, up from 386 on Sunday, with 97 people in intensive care, down from 98 Monday.

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.