Three of California’s 58 counties changed tiers on Wednesday, Nov. 4, according to the weekly update to the state’s four-tier coronavirus tracking system.
There are now nine counties categorized in the least restrictive yellow tier.
One county, Plumas, backslide out of the yellow tier to orange. Shasta County also lost ground, returning to the most restrictive purple tier from the red tier.
Colusa County progressed from the red tier to orange.
Counties are assigned to a tier based on metrics showing the speed and the spread of the virus in their borders, and each week – typically on Tuesdays –the state updates their status. The state moved its update to Wednesday this week because Election Day was Tuesday.
At a minimum, counties have to remain in a tier for three weeks before they can progress on, and they have to meet the next tier’s criteria for at least two consecutive weeks before making a move.
They can also backtrack if their performance on the metrics reverses course.
A list of what businesses are impacted by each tier is included below.
Note: The state recently added a new metric called health equity. For a county with a population of greater than 106,000, the county must: Ensure that the test positivity rates in its most disadvantaged neighborhoods – the Healthy Places Index census tracts are used for that – do not significantly lag behind its overall county test positivity rate. There are additional conditions listed on the state’s site.
Here is the current metrics for each county, where they are now and where they were last week.
State metrics:
How different are the tiers?
Purple is the most restrictive, especially for education. Schools in the Widespread (purple) tier aren’t permitted to reopen for in-person instruction unless they receive a waiver from local health departments for TK-6 grades. Schools can reopen for in-person instruction once their county has been in the red tier for at least two weeks.
Source: California Department of Finance
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