New reopening guidelines released for El Dorado County and California

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - Restaurants in South Lake Tahoe and the rest of El Dorado County will be able to provide indoor dining at 25 percent capacity starting Monday, August 31.

California Governor Gavin Newsom today announced a new set of guidelines for counties in the state, all based on a tiered set of metrics.

“The material impact to El Dorado County, as we currently understand it, is that starting Monday, August 31st, restaurants will be able to provide indoor dining at 25 percent capacity," said El Dorado County Health Officer Dr. Nancy Williams. "Because we have not been on the state’s monitoring list, our barbershops and nail salons have already been allowed to operate indoors, with modifications."

Newsom's plan has given every county in the state a color code based on COVID-19 criteria including the number of positive and new cases. At a minimum, counties must remain in a tier for at least three weeks before moving forward. Data is reviewed weekly and tiers are updated on Tuesdays. To move forward, a county must meet the next tier’s criteria for two consecutive weeks. If a county’s metrics worsen for two consecutive weeks, it will be assigned a more restrictive tier. Public health officials are constantly monitoring data and can step in if necessary.

“While the state map shows El Dorado County in the 'red' tier and the criteria used to determine the color tier indicates the less restrictive 'orange' tier, we believe it is a result of the color being determined from numbers from 14 days ago while the numbers shown on the map are current," explained Williams. "We tentatively believe that because El Dorado County was at the newly-created red tier a week ago, we may be able to move to the orange tier in a week assuming our number of cases and percent of positivity remain in the orange tier.

Williams said she is awaiting confirmation from the state as to when El Dorado County will be able to change tiers.

Tiers and what counties can do while in each one:
Widespread (purple) - Many non-essential indoor business operations are closed - Daily new cases are more than 7 per 100k and new positive tests are more than 8%

Substantial (red) - Some non-essential indoor business operations are closed - Daily new cases are 4-7 and new positive tests are 5-8%

Moderate (orange) - Some indoor business operations are open with modifications - Daily new cases are 1-3.9% and new positive tests are 2-4.9%

Minimal (yellow) - Most indoor business operations are open with modifications - Daily new cases are less than 1 and new positive tests are less than 2%

As of Friday, only three counties — Alpine, Modoc and Tuolumne — are in the yellow or “minimal” category and 38 counties in the purple or “widespread” tier.

Placer County (on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe) is placed in the 'purple' tier due to inclusion of data from early August, when they were still on the former Monitoring List. County officials expect to have news around movement to the 'red' tier and additional easing of restrictions around Sept. 8 if trends continue in the right direction.

Find status of all counties - https://covid19.ca.gov/safer-economy/.