San Bernardino County officials had hoped to reopen more businesses by reaching the less-restrictive red tier of coronavirus spread, but it had too many new cases and too little testing.
To move to the red tier from the purple tier — the most restrictive in the state’s reopening framework — the state requires a county to meet certain standards two Tuesdays in a row. San Bernardino County met those standards September 22, but not September 29. The two-week requirement means the earliest the county could enter the red tier would be Tuesday, Oct. 13.
The percentage of people testing positive remained good enough, but the adjusted case rate — which needs to be 7.0 or less — was 7.7, said county Public Health Director Corwin Porter. That’s the number of new cases per 100,000 people, adjusted for the number of people who have been tested. San Bernardino County’s rate is adjusted upward because of its low number of tests relative to the population size, he said. The penalty applies to counties that have less than the state’s median number of tests, which is 216 tests per 100,000 people. San Bernardino County averages about 180 tests per 100,000 people, so to avoid the penalty it would need to test about 900 more people per day, Porter said.
