Ventura County moves into red tier of state’s reopening plan

VENTURA COUNTY, Calif. -- Ventura County announced that they have moved into the red tier of the State's reopening plan on Tuesday morning.

Ventura County businesses and placed of worship will be able to open indoors.

Businesses and others will have to follow the California Department of Public Health guidance for reopening starting Tuesday afternoon.

Businesses will have to register for reopening, to do that, click here.

The changes come after the County qualified to move into the less restrictive red tier of the State's four-tiered, color-coded reopening system. Before moving into the red tier, Ventura County has been in the state's purple tier, the most restrictive tier.

According to the state, in order to move into the red tier the County had to see average case rates drop below 7 per 100,000 people and testing positivity rates dip below 8 percent.

For the past two weeks, Ventura County has met those requirements. As of Tuesday, the case rate is 5.5 per 100,000 people and the test positivity rate is 3 percent.

“This is great news for our County and our business community. We will continue to advocate for our local businesses and appreciate this opportunity to move forward,” said Mike Powers the County Executive Officer. 

Moving into the red tier means the following sectors can reopen with modifications:

• Places of worship, restaurants, movie theaters and museums can be operated indoors at 25 percent capacity or 100 people, whichever is less.
• Gyms can reopen indoors at 10 percent capacity. 12 feet distancing required in Ventura County.
• All personal care services such as massage, tattoos and piercing salons can open indoors.
• Indoor shopping malls can operate at 50 percent maximum occupancy (instead of 25 percent). Food courts can also open following the state's guidelines for restaurants.
• Indoor retail stores can now operate at 50 percent capacity (instead of 25 percent).

"The credit belongs to our residents, who have made lots of sacrifices and worked hard to improve our community transmission metrics,” said Rigoberto Vargas, the Public Health Director. “That same hard work must continue moving forward so that we don’t revert back to the purple tier and instead continue making progress towards the next tier, orange, so that additional businesses can reopen.”

Elementary and secondary schools can reopen for in-person instruction by October 21 if the county remains the red tier for two more weeks.

Currently, elementary schools can apply for a waiver from Public Health to reopen.

The California Department of Public Health has also issued a new Health Equity Metric to prevent spread among disproportionately impacted Californians.

The County of Ventura say they are committed to equitable response and serving and protecting the most vulnerable since the beginning of the pandemic. They have provided free testing, expanded testing hours and locations, contact tracing, multi-lingual outreach, assistance programs for food, rent and household bills, waived clinic fees, hotel vouchers, permanent housing and more.

The Health Equity Metric requires that the lowest Healthy Places Index, or HPI, quartile be below 8 percent.

To enter the state’s less restrictive Orange Tier, the County needs to stay under 5 percent.

The County is currently at 3.6 percent positivity rate for the lower HPI quartile compared to 3 percent for the County as a whole.

For more information about COVID-19 in Ventura County, click here.