Ventura continues to move up tiers as COVID rates decline
Ventura County COVID rates have been decreasing, meaning that the County can continue to move up tiers.
April 22, 2021
As of April 7, Ventura County moved to the orange tier which as a result of the county’s case rate remaining at 3.9 cases a day, helping move forward and open up the community.
Ventura County was in the red tier for a month starting March 17. In the red tier, restaurants and businesses had more stringent restrictions on their indoor and outdoor capacities.
According to keyt.com, in the orange tier, “Movie theaters, restaurants, and churches can go from 25 percent capacity indoors to 50 percent. Gyms will go from 10 to 25 percent capacity, and this also means that theme parks, and family entertainment centers can resume indoor operations at 25 percent capacity.”
However, additional restrictions on businesses and gathering statewide have been set to lift on June 15, according to state health officials. That reopening date was “set on the expectation that vaccine supplies will be adequate and COVID-19 hospitalizations and other virus activity will not rise” according to the VC Star.
Since Ventura County has been improving drastically in case metrics since January, the public health officials decided to move the county up from the red tier to the orange tier. Even though the county has moved into the orange tier and gotten some restrictions lifted, masks, social distancing, and all the other safety precautions are still important and being practiced.
According to Robert Levin in a press conference with the VC Star, “the county could qualify in weeks to move to the least restrictive tier — yellow.” He also talked about the need for more vaccinations and other measures in order to move up tiers once again.
The county’s case numbers have continued to decrease and that there were “only ten new cases of the virus across the county,” and that also “twenty-three people were receiving hospital care for the virus with five people in intensive care units.”
Also, with Ventura County moving up into the orange tier, there have been some restrictions changed for schools. One of them being the social distancing rule when before it was six feet, but now it is three feet, according to Ventura County Public Health.
“This brings hope that we are headed in a better direction,” county executive officer Micheal Powers said in an interview with keyt.com.
