Two Bay Area counties — Marin and San Mateo — advanced from the purple to red tier on Wednesday, allowing several activities and business sectors, including indoor dining with restrictions, to reopen. (Find a complete list of what's opening in these counties here.)
The earliest San Francisco can jump to the red tier is March 3, according to the SF COVID Command Center, which manages the city's pandemic response.
"Currently San Francisco is in the Purple Tier on the State's Blueprint for a Safer Economy," a statement from the center said. "We have to qualify for the Red Tier for two consecutive weeks before moving into that tier."
San Francisco is preparing for a potential move next week, and Mayor London Breed released a list of what the county will allow to open in the red tier. The list includes:
- Expanding outdoor dining to allow three households of up to six people
- Allowing personal services that require the removal of masks outdoors and indoors, with specific health and safety measures in place
- Opening indoor dining (including bars with full meal service, food courts, hotel restaurants) at 25% capacity, but limited to four people from one household, requiring that indoor dinner service end by 10 p.m., and other safety requirements
- Opening indoor gyms and fitness centers at 10% capacity
- Opening indoor museums, zoos and aquariums at 25% capacity
- Opening indoor movie theaters at 25% capacity without concessions
- Opening outdoor stand-alone amusement park rides such as Ferris wheels, carousels and train rides
- Lifting nighttime restrictions on gatherings and non-essential business activities between the hours of 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.
- Allowing limited use of indoor pools
"With the continued improvement of our COVID-19 health indicators, we could move to the state's Red Tier by next Wednesday, March 3rd," Breed wrote on Twitter. "This is a big step forward but we still have need to keep up our progress."
She went on: "More and more people are getting vaccinated every day, and I'm proud of the work that all of our residents have done to slow the spread. But we can't let our guard down, we don't want to go backward," Breed wrote on Twitter. "There's an end in sight to this pandemic, let's get there safely together."
California's reopening plan is dictated by four color-coded tiers. Each county is assigned to a tier based on its test positivity, adjusted case rate and an equity metric.
State of CaliforniaA county's tier assignment in California's color-coded reopening framework is primarily based on two metrics: the case rate (the number of new cases per 100,000 residents that's adjusted based on testing volume) and the seven-day positivity rate (the percentage of people who test positive for the virus out of all individuals who are tested). For a county to move into the red tier, it must report an average of four to seven daily cases per 100,000 residents and a test positivity of 5% to 8% for 14 consecutive days.
There's also a third metric, the health equity metric, that the state takes into account for larger counties. It's designed to encourage counties to test for COVID-19 in disadvantaged neighborhoods and ensure the positivity rates in these neighborhoods don't lag far behind the overall county rate.
San Francisco's seven-day positivity rate met the red threshold the past two weeks, with the city reporting a rate of 2.6% last week and 1.9% this week, according to the California state dashboard. The adjusted case rate last week fell within the purple tier at 8.9 cases per 100,000, while it was within the red threshold this week at 5.2.
A county can move from the purple to red tier at an accelerated pace if the health equity metric meets the threshold that is two levels from purple — in other words orange — for two weeks in a row. While the city reported a metric in the orange tier, at 4.2% this week, the level last week was in the red, at 5.4%.
It has been nearly a month since Newsom lifted the regional stay-at-home order, allowing Bay Area counties to reopen several business sectors, including outdoor dining and some indoor personal services such as haircuts.
When the order ended Jan. 25, all nine counties in the region moved into the purple tier in the governor's color-coded reopening framework — and they have remained in the strictest zone ever since.
The state's system sorts counties into four tiers — "purple" (widespread), "red" (substantial), "orange" (moderate) or "yellow" (minimal) — that measure the spread of COVID-19 and dictate what types of businesses and activities are allowed to open. The structure allows counties to be more restrictive and move more slowly than the state in reopening, if they wish.
When a county jumps from the purple to the red tier, it can opt to increase retail capacity and allow several sectors to open indoors with modifications and capacity limits including museums, zoos, aquariums, gyms, movie theaters, restaurants and places of worship.
Elementary schools can operate with in-person learning in the purple tier; in the red tier high schools and middle schools can open as well.
February 25, 2021 at 07:05PM
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-red-tier-indoor-dining-open-15976770.php
SF prepares for move into red tier: What could open next week? - SF Gate
https://news.google.com/search?q=Red&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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