CSAC Bulletin Article

New Small County Case Metric Helps Counties in First Week

October 8, 2020

After significant and sustained advocacy by the CSAC Rural Caucus and a special CSAC Rural Caucus Working Group led by CSAC Second Vice President Ed Valenzuela of Siskiyou County, the state applied a new case metric for small counties today.

The new metric, which focuses on absolute case counts rather than the Blueprint for a Safer Economy’s calculation of cases per 100,000 residents, already helped both Lake and Modoc Counties to remain in their current tiers.  

This flexibility comes after significant advocacy and explanation by small counties around the true risks associated with a distinct cluster of cases in a rural community.

The metric applies to counties under 106,000 residents and is a follows: For a small county that has a test positivity rate that meets the threshold of that county’s currently assigned tier, but is flagged for potentially moving back to a more restrictive tier based on its weekly case rate assessment using the number of cases per 100,000 residents metric, the following criteria will instead be applied:  

From Tier     To Tier     Pop ≤ 35K     Pop 35K-70K     Pop 70K-106K

Yellow      Orange             7                     14                    21

Orange     Red                 14                     21                   28

Red          Purple              35                    42                   49

If a county exceeds the following absolute weekly case numbers based on its population and tier for two consecutive weeks, though, it will be still be required to move to a more restrictive tier.

CSAC will continue to elevate the CSAC Rural Caucus voice and ensure that small counties are not left behind based on data within the Blueprint for a Safer Economy.

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