Despite progress, Merced County remains stuck in state’s purple COVID-19 business tier
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Merced County was left behind other Valley counties on Tuesday, remaining in the most restrictive level of coronavirus rules in California’s business-reopening program.
Despite a significant decline in the number of new daily coronavirus cases, Merced County was assigned once again to purple Tier 1 of the state’s color-coded Blueprint for a Safer Economy. Tier 1 represents “widespread” transmission of COVID-19 in the county.
The state Department of Public Health announced the tier assignments on Tuesday morning. Three other Valley counties – Fresno, Madera and Kings – all were promoted into red Tier 2, denoting “substantial” risk of viral spread.
To advance from the purple tier into the red, counties need to meet two key measures for two consecutive weeks:
- Have an average of fewer than 10 new confirmed coronavirus cases each day as a rate per 100,000 residents over the course of a week, and
- Achieving a rate of less than 8% of residents who are tested for coronavirus coming back with positive results.
Merced County’s daily new-case rate was 9.2 per 100,000 residents – a marked improvement from the 12.9 cases per 100,000 reported last week by the state.
But to officially get into the red tier, when restaurants can legally resume limited indoor dining and gyms can once again let workouts happen indoors, the county must remain below 10 cases per 100,000 for another week. The earliest that the county could advance will be next week, with the April 6 tier assignments.
As of Monday, the virus has killed 435 Merced County residents since the pandemic started. There have been 30,521 confirmed infections locally since March last year.
There were 19 COVID hospitalizations of Merced County residents as of Monday.
The tier assignments are typically announced on Tuesdays and take effect on Wednesday.
Of California’s 58 counties, Merced is one of only three, along with Inyo and San Joaquin counties, that remain mired in purple Tier 1.
This story will be updated.
This story was originally published March 30, 2021 at 11:04 AM.
