The first two California regions placed under the state’s stay-at-home order will remain under the order for the foreseeable future.
Both the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California regions were eligible to exit the order as of Monday (after having been under the order for the minimum three weeks), but with ICU capacity at zero in both regions and the state projecting capacity will remain below 15 percent for the next four weeks, “they will remain under the order for the time being,” Dr. Mark Ghaly, California’s secretary of health and human services, said Tuesday.
The greater Sacramento region, of which Yolo County is a part, is eligible to exit the order as soon as Friday.
The order bans all gatherings with members of more than one household, requires everyone to stay at home except for essential work and activities, closes hair salons, curtails retail capacity and limits restaurants to take-out and delivery only.
Yolo County joined the rest of the greater Sacramento region in being placed under the order on Dec. 11 after regional ICU capacity dropped below 15 percent.
In determining whether the region can exit the order on Jan. 1, the state will use four factors to project where ICU capacity will be four weeks from Friday.
Those factors are current ICU capacity (19.1 percent for the region on Tuesday); the current seven-day average case rate; the current transmission rate (known as R effective); and the current rate of ICU admission.
The state will release those numbers for the Sacramento region on or after Friday, along with the projection for ICU capacity four weeks out.
Whenever the greater Sacramento region does emerge from under the order, Yolo County will likely still be in the purple tier of the state’s color-coded COVID-19 blueprint.
The county did show slight improvement in its adjusted daily case rate on Tuesday — decreasing from 46.1 cases per 100,000 residents last week to 43.7 this week.
But that is still more than six times the rate of 7 or below needed to move to the less restrictive red tier.
The county’s test positivity rate increased over the last week, from 12.7 percent a week ago to 13.2 percent on Tuesday. Moving to the red tier requires a test positivity rate at or below 8 percent.
As of Tuesday, 54 counties in California remain in the purple tier, three are in red and one in orange. One county made progress this week: Humboldt County moved from purple to red.
