COVID-19 update: Tulare County coronavirus rates improve as June 15 and a full reopening nears – Visalia Times-Delta and Tulare Advance-Register

A week before California retires its color-coded pandemicreopening plan, Tulare County will remain in the orange tier.

Tulare County's COVID-19 current daily COVID-19 case rate is 1.5.per 100,000 residents, andthe positivity rate is 1.5%.The county scored 1.2% in the state's Healthy Place Index.

Tulare County's case rate has hovered between 2.6and 3.8cases per 100,000 for the past month, before dropping to the new low of 2.2 cases.To move to the least restrictive tier before June 15, Tulare County needed to test less than 2.0 daily new COVID-19cases per 100,000.

As of Tuesday, 28 of the states 58 counties were in the least-restrictive yellow tier,including Los Angeles and San Francisco. Twenty-sixcounties were one stage worse in the orange tier, including Tulare and the rest of the San Joaquin County.Just four counties remained in the most-restrictive red tier: Del Norte, Shasta, Stanislaus and Yuba.

Moving to the yellow tier would have allowed six days of relaxed restrictions such as indoor service resuming at bars and wineries, and more people allowed in movie theaters and gyms before the state fully reopens and every business drops its capacity limits and goes back to pre-COVID-19 pandemic ways.

On June 15, capacity limits and social distancing restrictions in most cases will be lifted at businesses, and the state will adopt federal recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on masks, meaning face coverings in mostpublic places won'tbe mandatory for fully vaccinated people.

However, masks will be recommended for eventsthat draw crowds of more than 5,000 indoors or more than 10,000 outdoors, according to CDPH. Masks will also be requiredon public transportation.

CDPHreported on Monday the states test positivity rate over the preceding week at 0.7%, tied with late May for Californias lowest reading in that key metric since the pandemic began.

State health officials on Monday also reported just more than1,000 patients hospitalized with confirmed cases of the virusand 219 in intensive care units, the fewest since the start of the pandemic.Deaths statewide, which at the height of the pandemic hit 680 a day, have fallen to18 a day, the slowest since the early days of the pandemic.

California has 18 million residents fully vaccinated against COVID-19with an additional 4 million partially vaccinated, CDPH said Monday. That meansabout 46% of Californias overall population are fully protected via vaccine and about 56% are at least partially vaccinated.

As of Tuesday,174,145 Tulare County residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

Vaccines are currently available only to those 12 and older, who make up about 34 million of the states 39.5 million residents. That means among eligible recipients, about 53% are fully vaccinated and 65% have had at least a first dose.

Since the pandemic started in March 2020, 49,813 Tulare County residents have been infected with COVID-19 and 848have died from complications of the virus.

Tulare County's total infection rates are fluctuating. Manyinfections have been recategorized after more complete testing. The county's total infection rate has topped and then retreated from 50,000 several times over the last few weeks.

James Ward covers entertainment, news, sports and lifestyles for the Visalia Times-Delta/Tulare Advance-Register. Follow him on Twitter.Get alerts and keep up on all things Tulare County for as little as $1 a month.Subscribe today.

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COVID-19 update: Tulare County coronavirus rates improve as June 15 and a full reopening nears - Visalia Times-Delta and Tulare Advance-Register