SAN DIEGO (CNS) – San Diego County will remain in the most restrictive purple level of the state’s four-tier coronavirus reopening plan, it was announced Tuesday, but there is still a possibility of being promoted to the less restrictive red level until at the end of the month.
According to state data released Tuesday, San Diego County has an adjusted case rate of 8.8 new daily COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people. To be promoted at the red level – and its limited allocation of indoor dining, gyms, cinemas and other businesses and services – the county must report a daily case rate of less than 7 per 100,000 and then maintain that rate for two weeks .
With these figures, the earliest county could go red is March 30. The California Department of Public Health evaluates counties on a weekly basis and schedules updates for Tuesday.
The percentage of test positivity is 3.3%, placing the county in the orange level. While the test positivity rate for the county qualifies it as orange, the state uses the most restrictive value – in this case the adjusted case rate – and assigns the counties to that level. The value of the county’s health equity, which analyzes the positivity of testing for the areas with the lowest health conditions, is 4.5% and is also in the orange level.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 vaccine deficiencies will shut down the Del Mar Fairgrounds vaccination site again this weekend and a technical error has led to the rescheduling of 1,800 vaccine appointments for this week, Scripps Health announced on Tuesday.
Scripps, which runs the Del Mar site, will be closed Friday through Sunday because of the low doses of vaccine that were delivered to Scripps for the week.
The station is scheduled to reopen on Monday.
Patients who had appointments on one of the three closed days are automatically rescheduled for either Thursday or early next week automatically through the MyTurn online scheduling system.
County public health officials reported 307 new COVID-19 infections on Monday, bringing the total number of cases to 263,275. No new deaths were reported on Monday and the number of deaths remained at 3,390.
The number of hospitalizations caused by COVID-19 decreased to 337 from 351 on Sunday, with 109 cases in the intensive care unit – decreasing from 113. on Sunday. There are 53 beds available in the county.
Out of 9,770 tests reported by the county on Monday, 3% returned positive. The 14-day rolling average remained at 3.2%.
No new outbreaks were reported on Monday. There have been 24 outbreaks in the last seven days, with 89 cases associated with these outbreaks.