El Dorado moves to red tier as COVID rates improve across California, Sacramento area

California promoted El Dorado County to the red tier in the state’s reopening system on Tuesday, loosening COVID-19 restrictions.

El Dorado is the second county in the Sacramento area to depart tight purple-tier restrictions, following Yolo County last week. Elsewhere in the state, Lassen, Modoc, Napa, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo and Santa Clara moved from purple to red this week.

In the red tier, indoor dining, along with several other types of businesses including fitness centers, movie theaters and museums are cleared to reopen indoors with capacity limits and mandatory masks.

Those changes officially take effect Wednesday, according to the California Department of Public Health.

The county was in the purple tier since mid-November, when CDPH and Gov. Gavin Newsom instituted an “emergency brake” rollback that demoted the vast majority of the state to those restrictions due to the emerging winter surge.

For several weeks last fall, El Dorado was one level better than red, in the orange tier. Key additions in the orange tier are looser capacity restrictions as well as a few more types of indoor entertainment businesses, such as bowling alleys, allowed to open with modifications.

Carla Hass, spokeswoman for El Dorado County, said the moment represents a big step toward “a higher level of normalcy.” In particular, she said, residents have been clamoring for the approval to return of indoor dining.

But she says residents should continue to exercise caution because the virus has not gone away. In particular, the south Tahoe and El Dorado Hills areas have seen continued community spread of the virus.

“Residents of El Dorado are continuing to take the virus seriously and as a result we are moving toward a higher level of normalcy,” she said. “It is important that even though we get to move to red tier, people continue to do the things that got us here. The virus hasn’t gone away.”

As part of the new school opening plan on which Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers struck a deal, public districts within counties in the red tier or better must offer in-person instruction for grades kindergarten through six, and for at least one middle or high school grade level.

All 15 public school districts in El Dorado County have returned to in-person instruction, permitted to do so during the stretch last fall of being in the red or orange tiers. South Tahoe High School is the only campus currently on a distance learning-only schedule.

Black Oak Mine Unified School District has been open five days a week since fall. Rescue Union plans its full return this Thursday, and Buckeye Union plans a full return March 15.

CDPH improved El Dorado on the basis of its overall test positivity and positivity within its most socioeconomically disadvantaged census tracts each being below 5% in two straight weekly updates.

Counties must remain in a tier for three weeks before advancing, so the earliest date El Dorado or any of the other six counties promoted Tuesday could land in the orange tier would be March 23, if they meet orange criteria in weekly updates that day and on March 16.

El Dorado has reported more than 9,100 confirmed cases and 100 resident deaths from COVID-19 over the course of the pandemic, according to its local health department. The county has recorded 96 of its 100 deaths in about the past three months, compared to just four in the prior eight months.

The situation has vastly improved from the height of the winter surge. El Dorado as of a Monday update reported only four virus patients in hospital beds countywide, down from a peak of more than 40 in early January.

El Dorado County has been among a handful of rural areas in Northern California that have bristled against Newsom’s restrictions. Some restaurants have stayed open for indoor dining.

But, despite concerns that some people are not taking the virus seriously, Hass said El Dorado is seeing big demand for vaccinations in the county, with clinic slots fill as soon as they open.

“We still have a higher level of demand (for shots) than supply,” she said. “There is a high demand from our residents, given that fact that our clinics fill up within 24 hours of becoming available.”

How close are neighboring counties to tier promotions?

Among El Dorado’s neighbors in the six-county region — Sacramento, Placer, Sutter, Yolo or Yuba — only Placer also recorded a week of progress toward a looser tier.

There are two main paths to advancing from the red tier to the purple tier. Like El Dorado, a county can maintain test positivity below 5% and “health equity” test positivity in disadvantaged neighborhoods below 5% in two consecutive tier list updates.

The other route is to record an overall test positivity below 8% and fewer than seven daily cases per 100,000 residents for back-to-back weeks. The health equity metric is not considered for what CDPH considers to be “small” counties — any with fewer than 106,000 residents, so any county below this threshold must follow this path to promotion.

Placer County earned a week of credit toward the red tier by meeting all three metrics: overall test positivity of 2.9%, health equity positivity of 3.1% and a daily case rate of six per 100,000.

Sacramento County recorded 12 daily cases per 100,000, with an overall test positivity rate of 4.7% and a health equity positivity of 6.6%. The latter metric improved from 8.3% last week, so a similar decline next week would bring both positivity rates below 5%.

In the Yuba-Sutter bicounty area, Sutter had a test positivity of 6.8% with 13.4 daily cases per 100,000. Yuba had positivity of 7% and a case rate of 12.6 per 100,000. Neither are populous enough to qualify for the health equity metric.

Yolo County has already joined the red tier. To improve to orange, it must either record fewer than four daily cases per 100,000 residents with a test positivity below 5% for two straight weeks; or have an overall test positivity rate below 5% plus a health equity test positivity rate less than or equal to 2.1% for two straight weeks. Yolo’s metrics in this week’s update were 5.2 cases per 100,000, an overall test positivity of 1.2% and a health equity positivity of 4.5%.

The Bee’s Sawsan Morrar contributed to this story.