Some businesses in Orange County, Calif. will be allowed to boost capacity as the region slides into California’s less-restrictive reopening tier May 19. Improving COVID-19 metrics permit the county to enter the yellow tier under the state’s blueprint for a safer economy, the California Department of Health said May 18. The new tier will allow…

Orange County, Calif. has begun to close in on entering the state’s least-restrictive COVID-19 stage after reporting three consecutive days of yellow tier metrics. According to metrics released May 9, the county’s daily case rate per 100,000 people was down to two, qualifying it for yellow tier status. The other two metrics required to make yellow tier, overall positivity rate and health equity…

SANTA ANA—Orange County continues to show encouraging signs of declining COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, and a major healthcare provider has opened one of two new mass vaccination sites in the county. “The numbers are looking great in Orange County,” Andrew Noymer, a University of California–Irvine professor of population health and disease prevention, told City News…