STANISLAUS COUNTY, Calif. — Many hopes were dashed this week after San Joaquin County missed the transition to the red tier, and now Stanislaus County is hoping to avoid a similar fate.
Stanislaus County will have to maintain or improve their current metrics this week or start all over again, which means meeting the red tier criteria again for two weeks straight.
“Now is not the time to let your guard down,” said Kamlesh Kaur, spokesperson for Stanislaus County Health Services. “There is a lot of things dependent on getting to the red tier... We have to meet these marks next week and onwards.”
The red tier hype was very real for places like Modesto City Schools, which was hoping to welcome their junior high and high school students back to the classroom this week. Since the county didn’t meet the red tier, that welcome back was delayed.
Now, the anticipated move to the red tier is March 23, but, after the county’s own delay and San Joaquin County missing its mark, the reality is that the move is far from guaranteed.
Kaur said the case rate decline in the county has been slowing, so their next chance at moving into the red tier is maintaining or improving their test positivity rate. If the rate increases, the county has to start over.
“That’s a scenario that we could potentially see next week, and for that reason, we continue to ask our community members to get tested,” Kaur said.
Testing is tied to California’s tier system and to the county’s case rate. If more people get tested, then there’s more accuracy on the rate of coronavirus spread and, potentially, a quicker move through the reopening tiers.
Kaur said another element that caused hang-ups in the transition was gatherings.
“We have been seeing quite a few large family and friend gatherings in our community as well. One in 10 people who have contracted COVID-19, in the past two weeks at least, they had participated in a large friends or family gathering,” she said. “So, that has contributed to quite a lot of our cases.”
Kaur said that the county was between 40 to 60 cases a day last week until gatherings caused a spike in cases.
“For us to get in red tier, our behavior needs to reflect that as well,” Kaur said.
If Stanislaus County wants to see the red tier next week, people will have to avoid gatherings and wear masks, practice social distancing and get tested. While the county wants to reach the red tier, its eyes are set firmly on the least-restrictive yellow tier. Kaur said they’ll need everyone to pull together so they can see this through.
“Once again, this is what we ask of our community members consider the changes we could be getting to,” Kaur said. “We’ve been through this whole year. We’re sort of in the final stretch with the vaccines being here and case rates dropping; we just need to continue practicing those behaviors in order for us to get to the end goal of getting to the yellow tier.”
