Two more Bay Area counties reach orange tier, one held back.
Alameda and Santa Cruz will be allowed to move forward while Napa must stay in the red tier
Alameda and Santa Cruz counties are moving on to the orange stage of California’s COVID-19 reopening plan, state officials announced Tuesday.
But Napa County — which had appeared poised to advance this week with infection rates falling across the Bay Area and state as a whole — will have to stay in the stricter red tier after an uptick in cases. That means winery indoor tasting rooms will remained closed for now.
The new tier assignments will take effect today.
Data posted by the state last week showed each of those three counties had new COVID-19 case and test positivity rates that were low enough to advance from the red, or “substantial,” stage to the “moderate” orange level. That meant the counties would advance this week if those rates stayed the same or kept declining.
In Napa County, state data shows the adjusted case rate rose from 2.8 cases per 100,000 residents per day last week to 4.6 this week — above the orange tier threshold. Now the soonest the county can advance is in two weeks.
As for Santa Cruz and Alameda counties, the orange tier allows for bars that don’t serve food to reopen outdoors, and lets wineries, distilleries and breweries without food service start seating customers inside.
That’s a big deal for
Livermore Valley wineries such as Wood Family Vineyards, where owner Rhonda Wood said Tuesday that she is “very excited” to finally reopen her “nice, big beautiful, spacious” tasting room.
The winery has turned its parking lot off Vasco Road into outdoor seating during the pandemic, serving customers around 11 spaced-out barrels under tents. Starting this weekend, Wood said, she would add perhaps two or three tables in the tasting room.
“We also want people to feel comfortable, and not everyone is going to feel comfortable to come in at this point,” Wood said. “I think it will be a gradual and natural move inside.”
Bowling alleys and cardrooms can reopen as well, and indoor operations at churches, movie theaters, restaurants and museums would be subject to higher capacity limits.
Amusement parks got the green light to welcome the public back starting
Thursday, so long as their counties are in the red tier or better, under rules the state previously announced.
Moving to orange means the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk can increase its capacity from 15% to 25% when it restarts rides on Thursday, and adds the park’s bowling alley to its list of reopening attractions.
The move will also allow the Oakland Athletics to sell about 1,200 more tickets to games at the Oakland Coliseum when the season starts Thursday.
Team officials initially said they would not be able to take advantage of the county’s move to the orange tier — which bumps up capacity limits for stadiums from 20% to 33% — because of the need to maintain 6 feet of space between groups. But late Tuesday a spokesman said the team has found space for a few more fans, bringing the Coliseum’s capacity to 12,188, or 26% of normal.
Four other Bay Area counties — Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco and Marin — have reached the orange tier over the past two weeks.
Adding Alameda to that list means a substantial majority of the ninecounty region’s 7.6 million residents are set to be subject to the second-loosest restrictions in California’s four-stage system.
Contra Costa, Sonoma and Solano counties are set to stay in the red tier through at least the next two weeks, after none of those counties met the threshold for orange in data the state released Tuesday.
“We also want people to feel comfortable, and not everyone is going to feel comfortable to come in at this point. I think it will be a gradual and natural move inside.”
— Rhonda Wood, owner of Wood Family Vineyards