SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KRON) – As COVID-19 numbers continue to fall in California, more counties are moving to reopen some indoor businesses.
State-wide COVID-19 numbers continue to fall with a positivity rate at 3.6% over the last two weeks and an average case rate of 7.7 per 100,000 people.
California on Tuesday was officially removed from the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut mandatory 14 day quarantine list for travelers.
Three more counties got the green light Tuesday to move forward into the next tier of reopening.
The state’s top health officers announced Marin, Tehama and Inyo moved from the widespread purple tier to the substantial red tier, which allows counties to reopen many indoor businesses with extremely limited capacities.
Schools can also reopen for these counties in two weeks.
“We know there’s a whole host, another set of counties that are in purple today that have met the criteria for the Red tier for one week, so if those trends hold, some additional counties can move from purple to red next week,” Dr. Mark Ghaly, the Health and Human Services Secretary, said.
San Diego County, which was the first large county to move out of the state’s most restrictive tier, could fall back right back into it if their increased numbers continue for another week.
State officials won’t say yet if the indoor businesses and college reopenings accounted for their boost in cases and positivity rate.
“We want to be slow in the forward movement, to make sure any decision to move a county into a more restrictive tier to make sure we don’t cause businesses and communities to feel stuck in the middle going back and forth between having some level of operations and bring that back down,” Ghaly said.
With holidays around the corner, including Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, state officials urge caution.
They warned trick or treating could also look different as health leaders spend the next few weeks developing guidance for Halloween.