LA County’s first day in orange tier triggers buzz about moving on to yellow

Los Angeles County public health officials on Monday, April 5, ended the mandate for fully vaccinated travelers to quarantine upon their arrival here, following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eased its COVID-19 travel guidelines last week.

Speculation was already building Monday about a possible quick jump into the least-restrictive yellow tier, but Ferrer said that’s unlikely to happen for at least three weeks.

Reaching the even less restrictive yellow tier of the state’s blueprint, which guides business reopenings during the pandemic, currently requires a county’s new infection rate to fall below 1 per 100,000 residents. However, that benchmark will be eased to less than 2 per 100,000 residents this week, when the state reaches its goal of administering 4 million doses of vaccine in low-income hard-hit communities throughout California.

The state could reach that goal by Tuesday.

Ferrer said even if the state reaches the goal and the yellow-tier threshold is eased, the county’s case rate will still be too high to immediately advance. The state adjusts each county’s case rate weekly, on Tuesdays.

“I don’t think that we will meet that threshold tomorrow (Tuesday),” Ferrer said. “Which means, again, these are thresholds you need to meet for two consecutive weeks before you would really be able to move the county into a different tier.”

That requirement means it will be at least three weeks until the county would qualify for a move to yellow. State rules technically require the county to remain in orange for at least three weeks before advancing to less-restrictive tier, although the state waived that requirement for the county to move into orange.

Ferrer said staying in orange for three weeks will “give us plenty of time to reopen safely in the orange tier as we all look forward to continuing to decrease the case load so much so that we’d be able to move to the yellow tier, which really indicates that you have minimal transmission. I look forward to that as well.”

A move to the yellow tier would mean more dramatic increases in allowable capacity at a host of businesses and attractions, along with a reopening of indoor bars and increased attendance at Dodger games and other outdoor sporting events. Until then, Ferrer and other health officials continued to urge residents to adhere to infection-control measures to avoid the kind of case increases being seen in more than two dozen other states over the past two weeks.

This advancement comes as the county reported only one death from coronavirus Monday for the first time since October 19, and the region shifted from the red to the less-restrictive orange tier in its re-opening journey.

The sole death brings the county’s total deaths to 23,276. Officials also reported 366 cases Monday, bringing that total to 1,222,447.

Among cities with their own health departments: Long Beach reported two new fatalities, raising its death toll to 914, and 104 more cases, raising its total since the pandemic began to 53,322. Pasadena reported two new cases, for a total of 11,154; the city’s death toll remained at 657.

“We are not seeing the beginning of a surge here in Los Angeles County in the way that many other cities across the nation are now experiencing,” said Dr. Christina Ghaly, the county’s health services director. “This is obviously a very good thing. The daily number of newly hospitalized patients with positive tests for COVID-19 across Los Angeles County has continued to gradually decline.”

According to state figures, there were 568 people hospitalized due to COVID in the county as of Monday, down from 591 on Sunday. There were 144 people in intensive care, down from 151 on Sunday.

Last week, hospitalizations in the county dipped below 600 for the first time since the early days of the pandemic.

While all of that is encouraging news, public health director Barbara Ferrer said, there are still 5.5 million people in the county, or about half of its population, without first vaccinations.

The vaccines, said L.A. County Board of Supervisors Chair Hilda Solis, are “the ticket out of the pandemic.”

“It’s critically important that businesses follow the safety measures laid out in the protocol,” Ferrer said. “As we’ve seen in past three increases in capacity limits, if we’re not careful this can lead to an increase in cases.”

Officials haven’t seen increases in cases since loosening restrictions in the red tier, Ferrer said, but that just means in order to move forward, everyone has to keep practicing the safety measures that got the county to this point, including getting vaccinated when it’s their turn.

“We don’t want to take a step backwards and live though another (surge),” Ferrer said. “Hospitals are just now getting much needed relief, and businesses can’t handle that again.”

As for the new travel guidelines: In L.A. County, fully vaccinated residents who return with no symptoms are not required to quarantine or get tested for COVID-19, officials said.

Residents are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after receiving a second dose of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines, or two weeks after getting the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Non-essential travelers who are not fully vaccinated must quarantine for seven days if they test negative for COVID-19 three to five days upon returning. They must quarantine for 10 days if they did not get tested for COVID-19 after arrival.

All travelers must self-monitor themselves for symptoms for at least 14 days and avoid being around people who are at increased risk for severe illness. If symptoms develop, they are to isolate and get tested.

Ferrer reminded residents that asymptomatic people are still capable of spreading the virus, so it’s important to not let up on safety precautions, especially for people who have not been vaccinated, leaving them at elevated risk.

“L.A. County and the CDC urge everyone to avoid nonessential travel at a time when there’s significant hot spots across the country and the world,” Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said. “And there’s significant risk from more infectious variants.”

Also last week, California announced that indoor venues and sports arenas can let audiences back in — with tier-specific restrictions — on April 15 for concerts, theater performances and sports events, but L.A. County needs more time to decide how to do it.

“We have to learn exactly what those modifications are,” Ferrer said. “In L.A. County we can’t afford any mistakes.”

By April 15, she added, there still wouldn’t be enough people vaccinated in L.A. County to have the needed layer of protection to allow those re-openings in the region.

Pasadena officials said Monday they will align with the state and allow indoor audiences for such shows on April 15. Long Beach is also still considering if and how it would adopt the state guidance, city spokeswoman Jennifer Rice Epstein said in a Monday email.

Under the indoor rules, counties in the second-least restrictive orange tier, including LA County, could allow venues to put on shows with 15% or 200 people, whichever is fewer. In the least-restrictive yellow tier, that capacity would increase to 25% or 300 people. But if all guests are tested or provide proof of full vaccination, those capacities would increase to 35% for the orange tier and 50% in the yellow tier.

The more transmission there is of the initial virus, the more variants take hold, Ferrer said, which is one reason the agencies are asking people not to travel if they don’t have to. Variants from the United Kingdom and Brazil, she added, are circulating but not dominating–and officials want to keep it that way since the variants are known to be more infectious.

Monday was also the county’s first day in the orange tier, which means:

• Bars are permitted to open for outdoor service only, with hours restricted to 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. No live entertainment will be permitted, but TV viewing will be allowed;
• Amusements parks can reopen at 25% capacity ;
• Fans are allowed at outdoors sports and live performances , capped at 33%;
• Restaurants, museums, places of worship and movie theaters will be able to increase indoor capacity from 25% to 50%;
• Gyms and fitness centers will move from 10% to 25% capacity; and
• Cardrooms would be able to move back indoors at 25% capacity.

Although the county technically advanced into the orange tier of the state’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy last week, health officials waited until Monday to enact the eased business restrictions. That enabled the county to remain in the red tier for a full three weeks, giving health officials a chance to ensure that the eased red-tier restrictions did not cause a sudden jump in COVID infections. Pasadena did the same.

Long Beach, which has its own health department, had already made the move Thursday, April 1.

A handful of Los Angeles area restaurants told Southern California News Group that they were not even aware of the transition from 25% to 50% capacity.

At True Food Kitchen in Pasadena, the incremental jump in indoor capacity hasn’t made much of a difference in business, said manager Dani Navarro.

At Burger Daddy in Long Beach, owner John Bowers said things have gotten busier since patrons could start dining inside his eatery, but safety is still his first priority.

“We’re a casual burger joint, so to-go, outdoor dining, and delivery has been enough to keep us going,” he said. “Now that we are open for indoor service, the restrictions are fairly easy to abide by. By and large, bars and restaurants make a living by taking health and safety protocols seriously.”

Staff writers Bradley Bermont, Olga Grigoryants, Stephanie Stutzman and Hunter Lee, and City News Service, contributed to this report.