SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Sacramento County officials and businesses set out to "Turn Sacramento Orange" before Halloween.
However, after Tuesday's tier update from the California Department of Public Health, the likelihood that the county would move tiers shrunk significantly.
CDPH's data showed Sacramento County had too high of a case rate to meet its goal. The county would need to decrease its case rate and positivity rate to the orange tier's level for a minimum of two weeks to move from the red tier to the orange tier. While the county's numbers are trending downward, it's case rate was just 0.4 cases per 100,000 residents shy of meeting the orange tier's level.
"Our test positivity rate was 2.5%, and health equity was 3.5% - both are within the Orange criteria," Sacramento County spokesperson Brenda Bongiorno said in an email.
The CDPH implemented a health equity metric on Tuesday, Oct. 6, that could help counties move quicker to less restrictive tiers should county have low rates of the coronavirus among its communities of color.
Bongiorno said the county would need to decrease it's positivity rate or case rate to the yellow tier's standards before the health equity metric would help the county move to a less restrictive tier.
"In short, our number would need to qualify for two less restrictive tiers to be eligible for the Accelerated Health Equity," Bongiorno said.
The county might not reach the orange tier before Halloween, but the county encourages people to always wear masks, keep gatherings small and continue social distancing to keep lowering the case rate, bringing the county closer to the orange tier.
In the orange tier, bars, taprooms and wineries can reopen indoor operations. And businesses, which are already open, would have lessened capacity restrictions.