“I think we’re on the right track to go yellow,” Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, said Monday. “I know the number of our cases has remained low.”
The low number of cases should allow the county this week to step up to the least restrictive yellow level of the state’s Action Plan for a Safer Economy, which guides economic and other restrictions during the pandemic. Even more remarkable than the number of cases, the county reported no new Covid-related deaths on Sunday and Monday.
To reach the yellow level, a county must have an adjusted average daily rate of new COVID cases of less than two per 100,000 population. Last week, Los Angeles County’s rate fell to 1.9 per 100,000 population. If the rate stays below two when new state-adjusted figures are released on Tuesday, the county will officially drop to the yellow level on Wednesday, although the relaxed restrictions that accompany the move won’t take effect until Thursday in Los Angeles, according to Ferrer. . She also reminded residents that the state’s numbers are “adjusted,” meaning the state applies a number of considerations to come up with a final figure.
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“They use an adjusted case rate, but I’m not sure what that will be,” Ferrer said.
Entering the yellow level would allow higher capacity limits at most businesses, including theaters, concert halls, and theme parks. State guidelines say fitness centers, card rooms, wineries and breweries, for example, would be allowed to increase indoor attendance to 50% of capacity, from the current 25%. ; bars could open indoors at 25%; outdoor venues such as Dodger Stadium could increase capacity to 67%, compared to 33% currently; and amusement parks such as Universal Studios, which began allowing fully vaccinated visitors out of state last week, could reach 35% of capacity, from 25%. Some sites where all clients are fully immunized would see even larger increases. Local officials are allowed to be more stringent, but Ferrer said on Monday: “We will align quite significantly with the direction the state is taking.”
See the state’s pie chart here.
Movie theaters, for example, now allowed to reopen at “50% capacity or 200 people, whichever is less” in the Orange tier, can “increase capacity by an additional 50%, up to a maximum of 50% of the total capacity of the room ”. according to state rules. In other words, there is no longer a maximum of 200 people.
LA County remained in the state’s Orange level for almost a month before meeting the criteria for the yellow level for the first time last week. If, as expected, Los Angeles County continues to meet the state’s yellow level criteria for one more week, the county will be allowed to enter the yellow level by the middle of next week.
Ferrer said she was confident the county would qualify for the yellow level this week, but the county won’t know for sure until state figures are released around noon on Tuesday.
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