By POLITICO California Staff 09/30/2020 08:58 PM EDT
The state Department of Public Health is adding a new “equity metric” that counties must meet to advance to a less restrictive coronavirus tier, officials announced Wednesday afternoon.
Under the new rule, larger counties must now show that their most disadvantaged neighborhoods also have declining infection numbers in order for their entire populations to resume various indoor activities. The new rule takes effect next week for the next reveal on county tier status.
More specifics: The new metric applies to 35 counties with a population greater than 106,000 residents. The state says less populated counties have too few census tracts to have reliable calculations for the equity measurement. Combined, the smallest 23 counties have less than 1 million of the state’s nearly 40 million residents.
The rule relies on test positivity rate — the percentage of positive test results divided by the number of test- takers. To move from the most-restrictive purple tier to red status, a county must show that its lowest socioeconomic quartile of census tracts has a positivity rate below 8 percent, just as the county as a whole must do. The state is providing a little more leeway on the equity metric for counties to move to the orange and yellow tiers.
All counties, no matter their size, must still submit a plan to the state that identifies infection rates in low- income areas and explains how they are investing funds to stop transmission there.
Impact: The new rule could make it more challenging for counties to advance through the reopening stages. The state has four tiers, and the each tier beyond purple allows for more indoor operations in restaurants, gyms, churches and theaters. Counties need to advance out of the most-restrictive purple tier in order for schools to reopen all grades without a waiver.
In the state’s two largest counties that remain in the purple tier — Los Angeles and San Bernardino — the rule could further delay school and business reopenings. Even if the counties at large meet the state’s thresholds for reopening, they cannot move forward if their poorest census tracts are still struggling with the disease.
Thus far, counties have generally had an easier time hitting positivity rate requirements than the threshold for daily new infections.
Context: Gov. Gavin Newsom has long emphasized the disproportionate toll the coronavirus is taking on lower-income people of color — and on the state’s Latinx population in particular. Central Valley communities with large Latinx populations are still suffering from high rates of infections, hospitalizations and deaths than other areas of the state.
The new equity metric could create an incentive for counties to expand testing access, health services and outreach to lower-income communities.
Experts suggest more affluent residents benefit from better health care coverage and testing access. They are also able to create more social distance in less dense housing, as well as work more isolated desk jobs.
While the change ensures greater equity within large counties such as Los Angeles and in agricultural counties such as Stanislaus, it also could create a greater reopening gulf between homogenous counties and those with more socioeconomic diversity.
