California health officials sounded the alarm Tuesday over rising COVID-19 infection rates throughout the state, announcing that 11 counties had fallen back to more restrictive tiers in the state’s reopening system, based in part on recent upticks in their 7-day average positivity rates.
Among them, Contra Costa and Santa Cruz counties moved back into the second most restrictive tier (red), which could stall or reverse reopenings of some nonessential indoor businesses. Sacramento and Stanislaus counties moved back to the most restrictive tier (purple), which could lead to the closure, once again, of most indoor nonessential businesses.
This is the first week since August, when the system was put in place, that no county has been moved into a less restrictive tier, according to California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly.
“We anticipate if things stay the way they are, that between this week and next week, over half of California counties will have moved into a more restrictive tier,” he said at a Tuesday press conference.
Statewide, COVID-19 hospitalizations increased 31.6% over the last 14 days, while ICU hospitalizations rose 29.6%, Ghaly said.
“Pandemic fatigue” might be driving increased positivity rates, he added, suggesting that as the pandemic wears on into the holiday season, a desire for life to get back to normal may be leading more people to ignore public health guidelines.
Other drivers for the virus’ spread differ from county to county, Ghaly said, but noted that contact tracing investigations show that outdoor parties have been a common source of infection.
“We tend to take our guard down. We think it’s safe because we know the people even though we haven’t seen them in sometime. Even when we start outdoors, we move part of it indoors,” Ghaly said.
He urged residents to limit outdoor gatherings to small numbers of people, while being sure to maintain distance and keep masks on.
“Our actions on a day to day can really change our own risk profile of being infected by COVID,” he said.
— Marco Siler-Gonzales (@mijo_marco)