Move over red, here comes orange?

County set to move into red tier, progressing to orange

When the official COVID-19 metrics come out today for Tulare County, they will officially enable to county to move into the red tier on Wednesday.

And based on the stats reported by Tulare County Health and Human Services on Monday, the orange tier may not be too far behind.

All of the stats reported on Monday were some of the best that’s been reported in some time. Tulare County is in the most restrictive tier, the purple tier, but will move into the red tier on Wednesday.

In the red tier, restaurants can open indoors at 25 percent capacity. Many restaurants have already opened indoors but on Wednesday restaurants will be able to open indoors at 25 percent capacity while being within state guidelines.

Movie theaters will also be able to open at 25 percent capacity. Gyms will be able to open at 10 percent capacity.

The guidelines for churches won’t change as they’ll be able to open indoors at 25 percent capacity. Singing and chanting is allowed under the red tier guidelines as long as masks are worn but choirs are discouraged.

It’s expected Tulare County’s official case rate will continue to decline when it’s updated today. Its case rate reported last week of 9.5 per 100,000 over a 7-day period, which is .0095 percent, had already met the red tier standard. The standard was made more lenient to 10 or less per 100,000 when California provided 2 million vaccine doses for its most disadvantaged areas.

When California provides 4 million doses to its most disadvantaged areas, the standard will also be made more lenient to move into the orange tier.

Tulare County already meets the or

ange tier standard for its overall positive test rate at 4.4 percent. When the 4 million dose mark is hit, the standard for the case rate will be 6 per 100,000. Tulare County is approaching that number as the health department reported the county’s unofficial, preliminary rate was 7.2 per 100,000 on Tuesday. That’s a drop of .9 from the previous number reported.

Tulare County’s positive test rate for its most disadvantaged areas was 5.9 percent. The orange tier standard is 5.3 percent which the county could conceivably reach today. If that happens then Tulare County would need a case rate of 6 per 100,000 once the 4 million dose threshold is reached to move into the orange tier.

In the orange tier, the capacity in which many business can operate is raised to 50 percent in many cases.

The health department also reported a huge increase in recoveries over the weekend, leading to a huge drop in active cases. The health department reported there were 305 recoveries over the weekend.

There are now 47,117 people in Tulare County who have recovered after testing positive for COVID-19.

That led to a decrease in active cases by 251. There are now 703 people in Tulare County who have tested positive for COVID-19.

The health department also reported the lowest daily increase in overall cases in quite some time. The health department reported 54 more cases over the weekend or 18 per day. Since March 11 there have been 48,604 cases in Tulare County.

The health department also reported no deaths over the weekend, leaving the number of deaths in Tulare County due to COVID-19 at 784.

The county has data on all 784 deaths of which 592 were ages 65 and older, 176 were ages 41-64 and 15 were ages 26-40. One child in Tulare County has died due to complications with COVID-19.

There have been 191 deaths related to nursing homes and 593 deaths not related to nursing homes. Sierra View Medical Center has had 158 deaths due to COVID-19.

There was another slight drop in Tulare County’s R number which measures the rate of spread of the virus and has been in the “likely decreasing category” for some time. That means the rate of the virus is expected to increase at a lower level than its current rate. Tulare County’s R number is .62 which represents the average number of people who would be infected by one infected person.

Since March 11 there have been 9,833 cases in the Porterville area, 43 cases in foothillmountain communities, 155 cases in Springville, 621 cases in Strathmore, 1,784 cases in Lindsay, 325 cases in Richgrove, 78 cases in Alpaugh, 780 cases in Pixley, 362 cases in Tipton, 1,448 cases in Earlimart, 1,153 cases in Farmersville, 1,035 cases in Exeter, 52 cases in Three Rivers, 898 cases in Woodlake, 743 cases in Cutler, 1,449 cases in Orosi, 90 cases in Goshen, 260 cases in Traver, 59 cases in the Reedley area, 22 cases in Orange Cove, 8,636 cases in Tulare, 4,141 cases in Dinuba and 494 cases in Ivanhoe.

In Visalia there have been 5,317 cases in one region, 3,493 cases in another region and 4,177 cases in a third region.

There have been 7,263 cases ages 0-17, 7,549 cases ages 18-25, 13,649 cases ages 26-40, 15,075 cases ages 41-64 and 5,041 cases ages 65 and older.

There have been 27,098 cases who have been Hispanic, 6,766 have been caucasian, 974 have been Asian, 346 have been African American, 320 have been Native American, 1,598 have been multi-race and 11,502 are unknown.

On Monday, Sierra View Medical Center reported it had four COVID-19 patients and seven patients suspected of having COVID-19. Sierra View reported four of its 10 ICU beds were in use. Sierra View reported three of its 21 ventilators were in use.

Sierra View reported it has one employees who has tested positive for COVID-19. There have been 172 employees who have recovered after testing positive for COVID-19 of which six were hospitalized. Sierra View has had a total of 1,159 positive tests.

There are 140 people in Tulare County under self-quarantine being monitored by public health officials.

With a population of about 477,000 people Tulare County has had an overall case rate of 10.2 percent.