Riverside County could slide back into more-restrictive purple coronavirus tier - Press-Enterprise

Rising coronavirus case rates threaten to pull Riverside County back into the purple tier, which could force some newly reopened businesses to close and re-impose restrictions on others, public health officials said Tuesday morning, Oct. 6.

The county on Sept. 22 moved into the red tier of California’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy, a color-coded, four-tier framework that tightens or loosens coronavirus restrictions based on a county’s new case rate per 100,000 residents and positivity rate, or the rate at which COVID-19 tests come back positive. That move allowed churches, restaurants, gyms and movie theaters to go back indoors, with limited capacities. 

“There is no good way to say it, but both our positivity rate and our case rates are still rising,” Dr. Cameron Kaiser, the county’s public health officer, told the Board of Supervisors during its Tuesday meeting. “We see a similar phenomenon in San Bernardino County, so we do not believe this is a local artifact of our own numbers.”

The county’s adjusted case rate, which is based on the amount of testing, “is currently entering the purple tier again,” Kaiser said. “And while we expect to remain in the red tier for the remainder of this week, pending the official announcement later today, if the trend continues, we are informed by the state we will face the possibility of going backwards.”

In addition to allowing gyms, places of worship and movie theaters in the county to have limited indoor operations, red tier status also cleared the way for schools to have in-person learning, though those decisions are up to local school boards.

Staying in the red tier requires the county to have seven or fewer new cases per day per 100,000 residents and a positivity rate of 8% or less. As of Tuesday, the county’s positivity rate is 5%, but its adjusted case rate is 7.6 per 100,000 and “that’s what’s pushing us up into the possibility of purple,” Kim Saruwatari, the county’s public health director, told supervisors.

The increase appears to be countywide and not limited to any age group or race, Saruwatari said.

“I think the concern is people are starting to become more lax in terms of following masking, social distancing, hand-washing and so we are seeing increased transmission,” she said.

Kaiser urged the public to get tested for the coronavirus to “get our testing rate back above the state median, as well as identify previously undiagnosed cases so that we can intervene and break that cycle of transmission.”

“Most of all, we still need people to do what we’ve been asking them to do — continue to socially distance, wear facial coverings and please work with our contact tracers so we can find those events and settings where spread is occurring,” Kaiser said. “We don’t judge. We just want this to end.”

Kaiser’s and Saruwatari’s comments came as the board debated whether to pursue a reopening plan for businesses that could differ from the state’s four-tier system, a move that could imperil as much as $114 million in state funding but please residents who seen the pandemic as overblown and COVID-19 rules as a threat to personal liberty, livelihoods and mental health.

In neighboring San Bernardino County, it failed Tuesday, Sept. 29, to advance from the purple tier to the red tier. The earliest that county could move to the red tier is Tuesday, Oct. 13.

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Riverside County could slide back into more-restrictive purple coronavirus tier - Press-Enterprise
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