Orange County was given the green light on Tuesday to reopen movie theaters at limited capacity as the county’s daily new cases and positivity rate decreased, allowing the county to move to a different tier in California’s reopening classification system.
Movie theaters in Orange — as well as Santa Clara and Santa Cruz — can now open at 25% capacity or with a maximum of 100 people, whichever is fewer. Indoor dining can also reopen with the same capacity levels, while gyms and other fitness-oriented businesses like dance and yoga studios can reopen indoors at 10% capacity.
Movie theaters in Los Angeles County, however, must still remain closed.
Last month, state officials announced a new color-coded, tiered classification system to help determine what can reopen in each of California’s counties based on the number of daily new cases per 100,000 residents and the percentage of positive tests. At the time, the counties that could reopen indoor movie theaters included Alpine, Calaveras, Del Norte, El Dorado, Humboldt, Lake, Lassen, Mariposa, Modoc, Mono, Napa, Nevada, Plumas, San Diego, San Francisco, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Trinity and Tuolumne.
As of Tuesday, Orange County moved from the purple (“widespread”) tier to the red (“substantial”) tier, meaning that for three consecutive weeks, the county’s daily new cases per 100,000 people dropped from more than seven to between four to seven and its positive test rate dropped from more than 8% to between 5-8%.
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