What Do These Tiers Mean?

 

 

 

• A county must meet both the criteria for the next tier for two consecutive weeks and must also meet health equity measures.
• At a minimum, counties must remain in a tier for at least 3 weeks before moving forward. 
• A county can only move forward one tier at a time, even if metrics qualify for a more advanced tier.
• The state will establish health equity measures on activities such as data collection, testing access, contact tracing, supportive isolation, and outreach that demonstrate a county's ability to address the most impacted communities within a county. Additional measures addressing health outcomes such as case rates, hospitalizations and deaths, will also be developed and tracked for improvement.
• Exception: If a county (such as Santa Clara) is initially assigned to Tier 1 and has met the criteria for a less restrictive tier the prior week, it only needs to meet the criteria for one more week to move to the Tier 2. (For the September 8 assignment, a county does not need to remain in Tier 1 for three weeks. For all subsequent assessments, a county must remain in a tier for three weeks and meet the criteria to advance)

• During the weekly assessment, if a county's adjusted case rate and/or test positivity has been within a more restrictive tier for two consecutive weekly periods, the county must revert to the more restrictive tier.
• If a county's case rate and test positivity measure fall into two different tiers, the county will be assigned to the more restrictive tier.

• Counties will have three days to implement any sector changes or closures unless extreme circumstances merit immediate action.

 

• Ability to accommodate face covering wearing at all times (e.g. eating and drinking would require removal of face covering) 
• Ability to physically distance between individuals from different households 
• Ability to limit the number of people per square foot 
• Ability to limit duration of exposure 
• Ability to limit amount of mixing of people from differing households and communities 
• Ability to limit amount of physical interactions of visitors/patrons 
• Ability to optimize ventilation (e.g. indoor vs outdoor, air exchange and filtration) 
• Ability to limit activities that are known to cause increased spread (e.g. singing, shouting, heavy breathing; loud environs will cause people to raise voice)