16 More California Counties Move To Less-Restrictive Covid Reopening Tiers

Tom Tapp
·2 min read
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On a day when California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a massive loosening of Covid-19 restrictions to come in June, he also announced immediate progress in the state’s Covid-19 Blueprint for a Safer Reopening guidelines for over 10 million of the state’s residents.

“Sixteen counties are moving today into less-restrictive tiers in that Blueprint,” said Newsom.

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The governor revealed that the state had crossed the 20 million threshold for the number of vaccinations administered overall. More crucially, the state also reached the 4 million mark of vaccinations in lower-income communities that have been hard hit by the pandemic. Reaching that 4 million threshold will allow multiple counties, including San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Contra Costa and Sacramento to immediately advance to the less-restrictive Orange tier of the state’s economic blueprint. See map below.

Those regions are eligible to expand sector reopenings to Orange-tier limits as soon as tomorrow.

What that means is that movie theaters can move from 25% to 50% capacity. Likewise restaurants. Amusement parks can increase attendance from 15 to 25%. Outdoor live events can move from 20% to 33% capacity. Large indoor live events — as of April 15 — can move from 10% to 15% occupancy. See chart below for much more detail on those and other categories.

Meeting the vaccination target for lower-income communities also loosens the requirements for movement into the least restrictive Yellow tier. Given that those new thresholds, some of the state’s largest counties — such as Los Angeles and Orange — may qualify to move into the lest restrictive Yellow tier by the end of April.

City News Service contributed to this report.

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