SAN DIEGO — San Diego County health officials have reported a record 736 new COVID-19 cases today and five more deaths as nonessential businesses moved to outdoor-only when the county went from the red to the purple tier of the state's four-tiered coronavirus reopening plan.
The businesses include restaurants, family entertainment centers, wineries, places of worship, movie theaters, museums, gyms, zoos, aquariums and cardrooms.
The restrictions include closing amusement parks. Bars, breweries and distilleries will be able to remain open as long as they are able to operate outside and with food on the same ticket as alcohol.
Retail businesses and shopping centers will be able to remain open with 25% of the building's capacity. No food courts will be permitted.
Adjusting to Day 1 of San Diego County moving down in tiers, Crunch Fitness in Chula Vista is complying by shutting down indoor operations.
"We did moved it all ourselves with 8 people in a couple hours. We have our plated machines, our selectorized machines, our cardio, we have everything that we had indoors we brought it outdoors ," said Carly Hodson, district manager for Crunch Fitness.
But Hodson says outside isn't easy on gym equipment.
"It's going to be outdoors for a significant amount of time again, and that's going to damage our equipment and will be a whole new investment a couple years down the line, so that is frustrating when exercise and wellness are important, and our governor and the state of California should reconsider gyms as essential," Hodson said.
Schools will be able to remain open for in-person learning if they are already in session. If a district has not reopened for in-person learning, it must remain remote only. Offices are restricted to remote work.
Remaining open are essential services, personal care services, barbershops, hair salons, outdoor playgrounds and recreational facilities.
"I know the illness is a worry, but for me mental health, and physical well-being is also important as a mom, I have five kids myself, and for the first months of quarantine, they were so bored needing a way to get out all that energy," said Brenda Donegan, owner Ninja Factory with her husband.
The Ninja Factory in Eastlake made the switch to outdoors in order to keep their business afloat. Masks are required on the large inflatable obstacles, and there is a maximum of 30 children on the site, ages 2 to 12 years old at $15 each per hour.
"We're big on disinfectant and sanitizer and go through and spray everything down, every 30 minutes ," Donegan said.
The county's demotion from the less-restrictive red tier is the result of two weeks of case rates that exceeded the threshold of 7 per 100,000 residents.
"We have not seen cases this high in months, and it's a clear indication that COVID-19 is widespread,'' said Dr. Wilma Wooten, the county's public health officer.
In recent weeks, the region had an unadjusted rate well above the purple tier guidelines, but a significant effort to increase the volume of tests had allowed for an adjustment to bring it back to the red, or substantial, tier.
State officials reported Tuesday that San Diego County had an unadjusted new daily coronavirus case rate of 10.0 per 100,000. The adjusted case rate dropped to 8.9 per 100,000. Last week's unadjusted case rate was 8.7 per 100,000.
"These totals also show people are not following the public health recommendations that we know work to prevent getting and passing COVID-19."
Wooten added that in the weeks following Halloween, this record case jump is a warning sign people "need to follow public health guidance throughout the upcoming holiday season."
According to the reopening plan, a county has to report data exceeding a more restrictive tier's guidelines for two consecutive weeks before being moved to that tier. A county then has to be in that tier for a minimum of three weeks before it may move to a less restrictive tier.
Even as the number of cases continues to climb, the testing positivity rate for the region continues to decline. From last week's data, it dropped to 2.6%, a 0.8% decline. It still remains high enough for this metric to remain in the orange tier.
The state's health equity metric, which looks at the testing positivity for areas with the least healthy conditions, increased from 5.3% to 6.5% and remained in the red tier. This metric does not move counties backward to more restrictive tiers, but is required to advance.
The county launched a COVID-19 case rate map Thursday showing how cities and communities are being impacted by the novel coronavirus. The interactive map allows users to identify the case rate per 100,000 residents in cities and communities or by ZIP codes.