Name: San Diego County teeters on the edge of the red tier in latest state report
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San Diego County teeters on the edge of the red tier in latest state report

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Copyright © 2022, The San Diego Union-Tribune | | AdvertisementAdvertisement Well, that was close.San Diego County narrowly remained in the second-most-restrictive level of the state’s reopening system in the latest report from the California Department of Health Tuesday. San Diego received an adjusted score of 7 cases per 100,000 residents, the limit for remaining in its current tier, color-coded red. If not for another week of robust testing, the unadjusted result would have started the two-week process of falling to the most-restrictive purple level in which coronavirus transmission is considered “widespread.” Exactly that result happened Tuesday with Riverside and Shasta counties falling to purple after two consecutive weeks with case rates greater than 7.Dr. Wilma Wooten, the county’s public health officer, also took action against the Cheetahs Gentlemen’s Club in Kearny Mesa Tuesday, serving the strip club with a cease-and-desist letter one week after sending a similar notice to Pacers Showgirls in the Midway district.As was the case with Pacers, Cheetahs was violating local public health orders that forbid live entertainment, Wooten wrote.AdvertisementWhile the business is allowed to function as a restaurant, providing food and drink to patrons using 25 percent of its indoor capacity, continued performances at the location could “result in criminal misdemeanor citations with a $1,000 fine for each violation,” she said.Richard Buonantony, the club’s general manager and business license holder, said in an interview Tuesday that the club was closing at 6 p.m. that evening, after being contacted by county and city health and public safety officials. He said the conditions to operate were too restrictive to be viable. He said he did not know when the club would reopen.“We can’t accept the conditions and still provide a good product,” he said.Buonantony said his business had been closed for 7 months and had tried to reopen and operate as a restaurant. He said customers were allowed to remove masks to eat and drink, and a dancer removed her mask to perform on stage, at least 6 feet from others.“We are complying and we are law-abiding citizens,” Buonantony said of the business’ good-faith attempt to operate within public health rules.Buonantony said it is unreasonable for a government to take the position that human contact is not essential, and for some customers, such as recent widowers, adult entertainment clubs are their only comfortable source. He said rules that forced the club to close aren’t fair to customers or to the dancers and the employees whose jobs are essential to supporting themselves and their families.Public health officials have pleaded with San Diego County residents in recent weeks to do all they can to avoid transmitting the disease.Tuesday’s report included 265 additional cases and four deaths. All were men who had other underlying health conditions. They ranged in age from their 50s to their 80s. Wooten sounded an alarm Friday, letting the public know that a gradual increase in daily case totals is causing the numbers that the state uses to build its weekly tier reports to move in the wrong direction, which could result in a reduction in operating capacity for restaurants, places of worship, gyms and other kinds of organizations.That was definitely clear in Tuesday’s statewide report.San Diego County’s raw case rate was 7.8, enough to put it in the purple tier, but saw that score reduced by nearly 10 percent, to 7.0 because the region collectively performed 298 coronavirus tests per 100,000 residents, significantly higher than the statewide median rate of 239.Riverside, by comparison, had a rate of 195, under the statewide median, and saw its raw case rate of 8.4 increase to 9.1 cases per 100,000. Next Tuesday’s report will use the number of cases recorded from Oct. 11 through Oct. 29 to make its next case rate calculation. Through Monday, 1,152 confirmed cases have fallen inside that seven-day window, yielding a case rate of 4.8 per 100,000. That number is sure to grow significantly this week as tests performed over the weekend and late last week begin to come back positive.The state is also now calculating two separate test positivity rates for each county, one for the entire region and another for areas that score in the lowest 25 percent of a statewide health equity index. Here, San Diego County saw the numbers move in opposite directions in the latest weekly state scorecard. The overall test positivity rate increased from 3 percent to 3.3 percent while the health equity rate dropped from 5.7 percent to 5.5 percent. Both rates must be under 4 percent for the region to move up to a less-restrictive tier.Health equity is a new focus in the state’s overall reopening framework. By highlighting the places in each county deemed to have conditions that make living a healthy life more difficult, the CDPH aims to make sure that the most disadvantaged residents are not left behind as overall numbers improve. Equity rankings take a wide range of socioeconomic factors into consideration, from the percentage of residents living in poverty to nearby access to full-service grocery stores.Though rules for the very limited reopening of theme parks and professional sporting venues got the most attention, the state also delivered a boon to personal service businesses. Already, hair and nail salons are able to remain open in the purple tier. All personal services now have that same ability, including tattoo parlors and businesses that do massage therapy and hair removal.Correction: A previous version of this story indicated that San Diego is in the second least-restrictive tier. We apologize. 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Copyright © 2022, The San Diego Union-Tribune | | AdvertisementAdvertisement Well, that was close.San Diego County narrowly remained in the second-most-restrictive level of the state’s reopening system in the latest report from the California Department of Health Tuesday. San Diego received an adjusted score of 7 cases per 100,000 residents, the limit for remaining in its current tier, color-coded red. If not for another week of robust testing, the unadjusted result would have started the two-week process of falling to the most-restrictive purple level in which coronavirus transmission is...

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Paul Sisson

Morgan Cook

The San Diego Union-Tribune, the region's leading news source since 1868. Follow our journalists, too: http://j.mp/UTstaff

San Diego County teeters on the edge of the red tier in latest state report

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