Five more dead from virus, 46 new cases seen Overall numbers tracking spread in city continue their downward trend

Another five Long Beach residents have died from coronavirus-related causes, officials announced Tuesday, bringing the city’s death toll to 868.

The city also reported 46 more coronavirus cases. Officials have identified 51,562 cases in Long Beach since the pandemic began.

About 49,133 people, or 95% of those who have tested positive, have since recovered.

Metrics tracking the spread and effect of the virus in Long Beach continued to trend downward on Tuesday, as they have since midJanuary.

The city’s new daily case rate, for example, dipped to 6.5 per 100,000 people, from 6.6 the day before. The positive testing rate fell from 2.6% on Monday to 2.4% on Tuesday.

The number of people being treated for the virus in local hospitals, meanwhile, fell to 72 from 77 the previous day.

Long Beach’s vaccination program also continued to make progress.

The city administered 6,027 more vaccines, bringing the total so far to 135,838, with 90,476 of those having been first doses. So far, 17.6% of Long Beach’s residents have been inoculated.

Long Beach also could soon be allowed to ease restrictions on some businesses, including letting the Aquarium of the Pacific, movie theaters and restaurants open indoors with vastly reduced capacity. That’s because Los Angeles County is on the cusp of moving from the purple tier, the most-restrictive tier in the state’s reopening guidelines, to the red tier, the second-most restrictive.

The state requires a positivity rate of 8% or lower and a new daily case rate of seven or fewer per 100,000 people to move into the red tier. The county, which had already seen its positivity rate fall below that threshold, saw its case rate dip to 5.2 cases per 100,000 people on Tuesday.

Under current rules, the county would have to remain there for two weeks before further reopening could begin. But if the state hits a target of vaccinating 2 million people in the most underserved communities, which will likely happen this week, then the red-tier threshold would climb to 10 cases per 100,000 people and, according to county officials, further reopening could occur within 48 hours. Long Beach would have to amend its own health orders.