RIVERSIDE – (INT) – Riverside County may be nearing a stalemate in trying to rise above its purple tier (widespread) status in the coronavirus pandemic.

As more residents focus on getting the vaccine, testing its taking a hit.

Riverside County currently meets one of the state’s metrics to move into the less restrictive red tier. However, both the red tier’s metrics for adjusted case rate and positivity rate must be met to move forward and improve its economic recovery allowing more stores to reopen.

There is the health and safety aspect.
“We’re not at the point where enough people are vaccinated to just stop testing,” said Dr. Cameron Kaiser, Riverside County public health officer. “We’re getting shots to people as fast as we can, but until then we still have to break the cycle of transmission. We can’t do that without knowing if people are infected, and that means tests.”

Riverside County’s state-evaluated metrics include a 7.6 percent positivity rate and 16.6 adjusted new cases per day for every 100,000 county residents. The positivity rate meets the red tier range which is between 5 and 8 percent. The case rate needs to be between 4 and 7 per 100,000 residents to move to the red tier.

For the people being tested, those numbers are still above the statewide average.

Story Date: March 6, 2021