What to Know
- San Diego County's updated case rate is 7.4 per 100,000 residents
- In order to stay in the red tier, the case rate will need to stay in the 4.0 to 7.0 range
- If San Diego County is moved to the purple tier on Tuesday, businesses, and the public, will have to adapt to yet another wave of commercial restrictions
The California Department of Public Health reported last Wednesday that San Diego County's COVID-19 case rate rose to 7.4 pushing the county closer to the most restrictive purple tier.
The county's updated case rate reported last week is outside the 4.0 to 7.0 range of the red tier and qualified it for the purple tier, or tier 1. We'll find out Tuesday if the county will face yet another rollback of business reopenings.
“In the month of October, our unadjusted case count went from 7 to 7.2 to 7.8. It has now gone to 8.7," Supervisor Nathan Fletcher said in Wednesday's county briefing.
The county’s unadjusted case rate is now at 8.7 while the adjusted case rate for tier assignment is 7.4, Dr. Wooten reported Wednesday.
If San Diego County were to shift to it, restaurants would be forced to cease indoor operations, and gyms and places of worship would have to offer their services outdoors. Dr. Wooten said schools that are already open for in-person instruction will continue, but no new schools will be allowed to reopen.
“The truth is, that people are tired of this pandemic and unfortunately are letting down their guard, not wearing their masks, not maintaining social distancing, and all the other things we’ve been talking about these past few months," Supervisor Greg Cox said in Wednesday's county briefing.
Local
The four-tiered, color-coded system ranks counties based on the number of virus cases and infection rates. Businesses can add more customers or open more services as their county moves into lower tiers.
In order to move into a more restrictive tier, the CDPH website says, "If a county's adjusted case rate and/or test positivity has fallen within a more restrictive tier for two consecutive weekly periods, the state will review the most recent 10 days of data, and if CDPH determines there are objective signs of improvement the county may remain in the tier. If the county’s most recent 10 days data does not show objective signs of improvement the county must revert to the more restrictive tier. "
San Diego's case rate is at 7.4 but our testing positivity is at 3.2%, which falls into the less restrictive orange tier. When the metrics fall in different tiers, the county is assigned to the more restrictive tier.
For now, San Diego County will remain in Tier 2, also known as the Red Tier.
As of Wednesday, San Diego County has reported 58,106 positive COVID-19 cases and 904 deaths since the outbreak was first detected in the county.
All data are updated weekly every Tuesday but to due Election Day, the Tuesday, Nov. 3 update was moved to Wednesday.
