By the end of the day, many more Californians are expected to fall under the less restrictive red tier of the state’s reopening plan.
Gov. Gavin Newsom gave a strong hint of the coming changes on Monday.
“We are likely - and we’re getting the final information - to announce seven additional counties moving into the red tier. This is on top of the 11 that are no longer in the purple tier.”
San Francisco officials believe the city will be one of those counties to go into the red, and possibly Santa Clara and Napa Counties. That would allow indoor dining, gyms, movie theaters and for other indoor activities to increase their capacity.
The vast majority of the state is currently in the purple or ‘widespread’ tier. Marin and San Mateo Counties moved into the red tier last week.
Seven other mostly rural counties are also in the red tier and two counties – Sierra and Alpine – are in orange. There are currently no counties in the yellow tier, the least restrictive tier which represents a relatively minimal level of transmission.
But Newsom projected confidence that the state will continue to move in the right direction.
“We’re not slowing down; we’re now accelerating the pace of reopening. But I’m very encouraged by the stabilization, the case rates, the positivity rate,” he said. “We do anticipate a majority of Californians in the next few weeks to be residing in counties that have moved out of the most restrictive purple tier.”
Newsom said that state officials are closely monitoring the data and prepared to slam the brakes on reopening if downward trends of infection level off or even reverse.
Related
