San Bernardino County remains in the state’s widespread coronavirus risk tier, which means many non-essential indoor business operations are still closed, but some of the county’s numbers that determine the ranking improved slightly. The news came Tuesday (October 20), as seven more people were reported to have died from COVID-19.
The state announces risk-level tier assignments on Tuesdays and the county is still in the purple tier. The number of new cases per day per 100,000 residents, adjusted for testing volume, went up from 10.3 last week to 10.9 this week, but the other metric the state uses went down.
The percentage of tests that came back positive fell from 6.5% last week to 6.2%, and the positivity rate for socioeconomically challenged neighborhoods dropped from 8.7% to 8.5%.
San Bernardino County’s testing is also up. The county conducted 233.6 tests per 100,000 residents, up from 197 the week before.
Neighboring Riverside County, which had been in the less-restrictive red tier for almost a month, joined San Bernardino in the purple tier Tuesday.
