Red Tier Starts Sunday In OC: Museums, Zoos, Indoor Restaurants

ORANGE COUNTY, CA — Red tier, here we come. On Sunday Orange County will move to the less restrictive red tier in Gov. Gavin Newsom's Blueprint for a Safer Economy.

This new move will allow for bigger crowds in retail stores and the reopening of museums and indoor dining of restaurants, all starting Sunday.

The county thought they would have to wait until St. Patrick's Day to move tiers, however, due to California meeting inoculating two million Californians in underprivileged communities —where coronavirus has run rampant—that meant Orange County could reopen more business and institutions ahead of schedule.

The state allowed for higher case rates to move up from the most strict tier of purple to red, and Orange County had more than two weeks of credit for meeting that standard.

On Tuesday, when the state updated its weekly numbers in the tiers network, the county's test positivity rate improved to 3.2% from 3.9% last Tuesday, and the adjusted case rate per 100,000 people on a seven-day average with a seven-day lag improved from 7.6 to 6. The county's Health Equity Quartile rate, which measures positivity in hotspots in disadvantaged communities, improved from 4.9% last week to 4.1%.

Under the previous standards, the county was in the red tier with case rates per 100,000 and in the orange tier for the positivity rates.

The red tier allows for many more businesses and organizations to reopen. For instance, retail stores could allow for half capacity instead of 25%, and museums, zoos and aquariums could reopen for indoor activities at 25% capacity, as could movie theaters, gyms and restaurants.
Wineries, breweries and distilleries can reopen for outdoor business only.

The county Friday reported 172 more coronavirus cases, raising the cumulative to 248,389.

The county also reported 29 more COVID-19 fatalities, bringing the county's current death toll to 4,408. Of the fatalities due to the disease, 1,500 were residents of nursing facilities or intensive care units, OC Health Care Agency said.

Hospitalizations continued to decline, the agency reports. As of Friday, 245 COVID-19 patients are hospitalized, and of those 74 are admitted into Intensive Care Units.

The fatalities logged Friday upped the death toll for January, the deadliest during the pandemic, to 1,391. The death toll for February is at 411, and the death toll for December is 903.

No deaths due to the coronavirus have occurred in March as of this report.

The county also reported 13,096 tests, raising the cumulative total to 3,161,601.

A source said the state's database to report vaccine distribution has been down and won't be operational until next week, but Darrel Ng, a spokesman for the state department of health, said that was inaccurate and added, "We have been working through some data latency, but the database itself is up and we are reporting doses daily."