The best way Riverside County residents can help reopen the economy is to get tested for the coronavirus, officials said Thursday, Sept. 10, in hopes of boosting lagging test figures.
More testing can move the county into the red tier of California’s color-coded, four-tier reopening system, a county news release states. The county is currently in the purple, or most restrictive, tier for counties where the virus is deemed to be widespread.
The tiers are based on counties’ positivity rate — the percent of COVID-19 tests that come back positive — and daily average of new cases. As those metrics improve, counties move from the purple tier to the least-restrictive, or yellow, tier. For example, Orange County moved from purple to red Tuesday, Sept. 8.
Moving to red would allow Riverside County restaurants, movie theaters and places of worship to resume indoor activities at 25% capacity or 100 people, whichever is fewer. Museums, which are restricted to outdoor-only activities under the purple tier, can open indoors at 25% in the red tier, while gyms and fitness centers in red-tier counties can open at 10% capacity.
County officials for months have urged the public to get tested, whether or not they have COVID-19 symptoms, in an effort to control the virus’s spread. Testing allows public health officials to pinpoint who has the virus and where it’s spreading fastest, with those who have COVID-19 or who have come into close contact with an infected person being isolated to prevent future infections.
However, Riverside County’s current testing rate is only about 130 people per day per 100,000 residents, according to state data. That’s the seventh-worst of California’s 58 counties, higher only than six much smaller and more rural counties. The state average is about 218 people per day per 100,000 residents.
That hurts the county when it comes to moving out of the purple tier.
Riverside County’s positivity rate is 7.8%, which meets the red-tier criteria of 8% or less. But the county would also have to be adding seven or fewer new coronavirus cases per day per 100,000 residents.
The county’s raw rate is close, at 7.4 cases per 100,000. But because its testing volume is below the state average, the rate has been adjusted up to 8.6 cases per 100,000. Counties that have an above-average testing volume see their case rate adjusted downward.
“While Riverside County has the volume to test 4,000 people a day, only half that number have been getting tested at county and state testing sites in recent weeks,” the county news release read, adding the drop may be partially due to private test providers offering antigen and antibody tests that don’t factor into the state’s testing metric for active infections.
“We’ve made a lot of progress in slowing the spread of the disease and we want residents to know that more testing will help us continue to disrupt the spread of the virus,” county Director of Public Health Kim Saruwatari said in the release.
“At the beginning of the pandemic Riverside County led the state in per capita testing. We need to pick up our testing again — for both the purpose of isolating the sick and to help us safely reopen more parts of our community.”
Testing is free and available to everyone, regardless of health insurance or immigration status. Residents can get tested at a countywide network of 13 testing sites.
For information on testing sites or to make a testing appointment, visit gettested.ruhealth.org.
Staff writer Nikie Johnson contributed to this report.