State COVID Numbers Are Good News for Pasadena

New numbers released by the state regarding the spread of coronavirus bode well for Pasadena.

The figures place Los Angeles County’s adjusted average daily rate of new COVID-19 infections at 7.2 per 100,000 residents, putting the county on the verge of leaving the restrictive purple tier.

Leaving the purple tier would mean capacity at Pasadena’s indoor retailers could increase to 50%, and indoor dining could reopen at 25% of capacity along with movie theaters and museums. Gyms could open at 10 % of capacity.

In order for that to happen, the case rate would have to fall to seven infections per 100,000 residents and maintain that level for two weeks.

The state updates tier assignments for all 58 counties every Tuesday.

To advance to a less-restrictive tier of the state’s blueprint for recovery, a county must meet all three metrics required by the state for at least two weeks.

“We are moving in the right direction, a direction that will hopefully lead to us moving forward on our recovery journey, where more of our young people can go back to school for on-site learning,” said county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer.

Ferrer said the county’s average number of daily new COVID cases has fallen below 1,000, marking a return to “the levels we saw before the [winter] surge. These declines are real and we’re grateful for the choices made and the work done by everyone — individuals and businesses — that is making this possible.”
She said the daily average testing-positivity rate over the past seven days has dropped to about 3%.

“That’s actually the lowest it’s ever been since we’ve been offering testing in the community,” Ferrer said. “So yes, testing is down, but community transmission is also down as well, and that also drives a reduced demand for testing — less people have symptoms, less people feel sick, less people feel like they’ve had an exposure.”

To advance to the “red” tier, the county needs a new daily case rate of between 4 and 7 per 100,000 residents, along with an average testing positivity rate of 5% to 8% and a “health equity quartile” — a measurement of a county’s efforts to control the virus in disproportionately impacted communities — of 5.3% to 8%.

Los Angeles County’s testing positivity rate is 3.5% and the equity quartile is 5.1%, both good enough to actually qualify the county for the even less-restrictive “orange” tier of the four-level state blueprint. To advance to that tier, the county’s new case rate would have to drop to between 1 and 3.9 per 100,000 residents.

The county has been on the verge of exiting the “purple” tier before, meeting all the required metrics last fall. But the county was unable to maintain the metrics for the required two-week period, as case rates began to rise and eventually devolved to the winter surge.

Even if the county does move up to the “red” tier, it would still be up to county health officials to decide whether to actually loosen the business restrictions. Counties are permitted to impose more stringent restrictions than the state.

The county’s state-adjusted rate of new cases has been rapidly falling in recent weeks, from about 28 per 100,000 residents three weeks ago to 20, then to 12.3 last week.

With more groups of workers becoming eligible for vaccines on Monday, Ferrer again urged people not to make vaccination appointments if they are not in an eligible group. She said health officials “constantly get reports” about people gaming the state’s MyTurn computer system to make appointments regardless of their eligibility.

“If you were able to make an appointment but you’re not in one of the eligible groups, please cancel your appointment,” she said. “Don’t take away an appointment from an eligible worker and please don’t come to the vaccination site, because you will need to be turned away.”

The county on Monday reported another 32 COVID-19 deaths, along with 987 new cases. The numbers tend to be artificially low on Mondays due to lags in reporting from the weekend.

The new deaths increased the countywide death toll since the start of the pandemic to 21,467.