6 California Counties, Including SF, Move To Orange Reopening Tier, Further Loosening Restrictions On Movie Theaters, Restaurants, Concerts
Six Northern California counties with a population exceeding 3 million moved from the Red to the Orange tier of the state’s reopening plan on Tuesday. They are San Francisco, Santa Clara, Lassen, Marin, Trinity and Yolo.
The news was first reported by the Sacramento Bee. San Francisco’s move to Orange was confirmed by County Supervisor Matt Haney. SF Mayor London Breed also confirmed the news at a news conference. The county hit its lowest case rate in a year this week.
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San Francisco will enter the "orange tier" tomorrow.
— Matt Haney (@MattHaneySF) March 23, 2021
The move means that, as soon as Wednesday movie theaters in those regions can increase capacity to 50% or 200 people, whichever is fewer; restaurants likewise can expand to 50% indoor capacity; and outdoor concerts and live sports can reopen at 20% capacity.
Haney shared a list of those and other restrictions being loosened.
Here's what it means:
Bars can open outdoors w/o food.
Offices & conference rooms can open at 25%.
Expanding indoor dining to 50% capacity (from 25%)
Expanding retail to 100% (from 50%)
Expanding places of worship to 50% (from 25%)
Expanding indoor gyms to 25% (from 10%)
— Matt Haney (@MattHaneySF) March 23, 2021
Kern, Nevada and Stanislaus counties moved from the strict purple tier into the red tier.
Eight counties constituting less than 10% of California’s population — Fresno, Glenn, Inyo, Kings, Madera, Merced, San Joaquin and Yuba — remain in the Purple, or most restrictive, tier.
Last week, San Diego, Riverside, Santa Barbara and 9 additional counties including Ventura, Kern, Lake, Monterey, Nevada, Sacramento, Sutter, Tehama and Tulare are now allowed to shift from Purple to Red based on current state data and projections. The week before that, 13 others made the move: Amador, Colusa, Contra Costa, Los Angeles, Mendocino, Mono, Orange, Placer, San Benito, San Bernardino, Siskiyou, Sonoma and Tuolumne.
Those changes put the majority of the state’s 40 million residents in the Red tier.
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