3 counties in greater Bay Area jump to red tier

Here’s a rundown of what the state allows to reopen in the red tier:

-Restaurants indoors (max 25% capacity or 100 people, whichever is fewer)
-All retail indoors (max 50% capacity)
-Shopping centers, swap meets indoors (max 50% capacity, closed common areas, reduced capacity food courts)
-Personal care services – hair and nail salons, barbershops (open with modifications)
-Museums, zoos and aquariums (max 25% capacity)
-Places of worship (max 25% capacity)
-Movie theaters indoors (max 25% capacity or 100 people, whichever is fewer)
-Gyms and fitness centers indoors (max 10% capacity)
-Family entertainment centers (kart racing, mini-golf, batting cages) outdoors only with modifications

Amusement parks, bars without meal service, bowling alleys, indoor playgrounds, live theater, saunas and steam rooms, nightclubs and festivals are not permitted in the red tier.

It has been more than a month since Gov. Gavin Newsom lifted the regional stay-at-home order, permitting Bay Area counties to reopen several business sectors, including outdoor dining and some indoor personal services such as haircuts.

When the order ended Jan. 25, all nine counties in the region moved into the purple tier in the governor’s color-coded reopening framework — and they are now slowly moving into the more lenient red tier.

The state’s system sorts counties into four tiers — “purple” (widespread), “red” (substantial), “orange” (moderate) or “yellow” (minimal) — that measure the spread of COVID-19 and dictate what types of businesses and activities are allowed to open. The structure allows counties to be more restrictive and move more slowly than the state in reopening, if they wish.

A county’s tier assignment is based on three metrics: the adjusted case rate (number of new cases per 100,000 residents, adjusted based on testing volume); the positivity rate (percentage of people who test positive for the virus of all individuals who are tested); and a health equity metric.

Counties in the purple category are reporting more than seven new daily cases per 100,000 residents and have positivity rates above 8%. For a county to move into the red tier, it must report an average of four to seven daily cases per 100,000 residents and a test positivity of 5% to 8% for 14 consecutive days. The orange tier requires one to 3.9 cases per 100,000 and a test positivity of 2% to 4.9%, and the yellow less than one case per 100,000 and lower than 2% positivity.