EL DORADO COUNTY, Calif. — Even back in the less restrictive red tier, it is unclear how soon you’ll be able to catch a flick in El Dorado County.
El Dorado County is one of seven new California counties moving into the red tier.
According to California's Blueprint for a Safer Economy, the red tier opens up gyms at 10% capacity, retailers and malls at 50% capacity, restaurants can operate indoors at 25% capacity or 100 people, whichever is fewer, movie theaters and museums at 25% capacity, and aquariums at 25% capacity, as well.
But with only three movie-plexes in the county – Regal Cinemas in Placerville and El Dorado Hills and Heavenly Village Cinemas in South Lake Tahoe – there are no firm plans, yet, to restart the silver screen.
Regal shut down all 500+ of its locations nationwide back in October 2020. On Feb. 25, the movie giant released a statement saying, “We are encouraged by the opening of theaters in New York City. Big movies are made for the big screen and once LA opens, we are confident in the studios holding their release dates for new movies allowing us to reopen our theaters.”
ABC10 reached out to Heavenly Village Cinemas multiple times but we have not yet heard back on their reopening plan. However, they too posted on social media that a reopening could be sooner rather than later:
The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) just released coronavirus data on Mar. 2 showing El Dorado County met the state's requirements to move to the red tier.
"We were able to make the move to the red tier based on meeting the County’s overall test positivity rate and that positivity rate in our socioeconomically disadvantaged census tracts each for two consecutive weeks." El Dorado County spokesperson Carla Haas said. “Our case rate remains in the most restrictive purple tier, so there is more work to be done."
