SD County avoids purple tier again as it records 269 new COVID-19 cases

SAN DIEGO (CNS) - For yet another week, San Diego County avoided the fate of dropping into the dreaded purple tier of California's coronavirus monitoring system Tuesday, Oct. 27, with an adjusted case rate of 6.5 new daily COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population.

While the county's unadjusted case rate is 7.4 per 100,000 -- enough to be in the most restrictive purple tier, which has a floor of 7 per 100,000 -- the high volume of tests the county is able to perform daily allows for an adjustment from the state. This adjustment has saved the county from shutting down nearly all non-essential indoor businesses for several weeks in a row.

The state data, which is updated every Tuesday, reflects the previous week's cases to determine the fate of counties in the state's four-tiered reopening system.

San Diego County did show modest improvement, dropping .4 from last week's unadjusted case rate of 7.8. The testing positivity rate continued an upward trend, rising .2% from last week to reach 3.5%, but remains low enough for this metric to remain in the orange tier. If a county reports statistics meeting metrics in a higher tier for two consecutive weeks, it will move into that more restrictive tier for a minimum of three weeks.

The state's health equity metric, which looks at the testing positivity for areas with the lowest healthy conditions, dropped from 5.5% to 5.1% and entered the orange tier. This metric does not move counties backward to more restrictive tiers, but is required to advance.

County health officials reported 269 new COVID-19 infections and seven deaths Tuesday, bringing the case total to 55,210 and the death toll to 877.

Five men and two women died between Oct. 22 and Oct. 25, with one death occurring July 19. Their ages ranged from early 60s to mid-80s. All had underlying medical conditions.

Of the 10,456 tests reported Tuesday, 3% returned positive, bringing the 14-day rolling average percentage of positive cases to 2.7%. The 7-day daily average of tests is 11,173.

Two new community outbreaks were confirmed Tuesday, one in a daycare and one in a business. In the past seven days, 24 community outbreaks were confirmed. A community outbreak is defined as three or more COVID-19 cases in a setting and in people of different households over the past 14 days.

Of all cases, 3,875 -- or 7% -- have required hospitalization. And 898 -- or 1.6% -- of all cases and 23.2% of hospitalized cases had to be admitted to an intensive care unit.

Less than a week after fully reopening its schools, the Vista Unified School District reported four additional COVID-19 cases Monday, including two Mission Vista High School students, one Roosevelt Middle School student and one Alamosa Park Elementary School student, leading to the quarantine of at least 150 students and four teachers.

According to the district's COVID-19 safety dashboard, it has recorded eight cases since Sept. 8, with four of those coming after Oct. 20.