Sonoma and Contra Costa counties were the last in the Bay Area to move out of the California tier system’s purple tier. Now in the red tier, Sonoma County businesses can allow more customers indoors and resume close to normal operations. 

The counties moved into the red tier officially on March 14 and some businesses were immediately ready for the looser restrictions.

It has been some time since Sonoma County restaurants have been able to host customers indoors. Aiden Vaziri and Esther Mobley at the San Francisco Chronicle said, “…Sonoma County restaurants can open for indoor dining for the first time in six months.” Restaurants may now open at 25% indoor capacity or 100 people, whichever is less. 

Restaurants can expand service, but breweries and distilleries that do not serve food can only reopen with reservations. Bars that do not serve food must stay closed. 

According to Vaziri and Mobley, not all restaurants are rushing to open indoor dining. Many restaurants have created outdoor dining areas to accommodate the purple tier restrictions and are reluctant to open indoor dining while employees are still unvaccinated. 

Sonoma State University student Abe Lopez Ibarra, who works at a local Dutch Bros Coffee,  said the pandemic has been, “…a lot of trial and error…”, which has included closing the shop’s patio, finding new ways to hand out items to customers without contact and eliminating pre-shift meetings. Ibarra kept a positive attitude and said, “It’s been very stressful at times but with the crew we have, we like to stay as positive as possible in times like these.” 

Restaurants are not the only businesses allowed to open indoors. Gyms, movie theaters and museums are allowed to resume business as well. While gyms can only open to 10% indoor capacity, Johnson wrote that museums, theaters, aquariums and zoos can open at 25% capacity. 

While restaurants and similar shops have been quite restricted, retail and grocery stores have had more flexibility when it comes to capacity. In the red tier, retail stores and malls can increase their indoor capacity to 50% while they previously had to be at 25% capacity. Grocery stores can increase capacity from 50% to full capacity. 

Another change that Johnson mentioned is that schools can resume in-person instruction for kindergarten through grade 12 with some modifications, a relief for working parents with younger children.

The Press Democrat created a page on their website to make finding statistics on COVID-19 easier. The page is titled Coronavirus Numbers and breaks down COVID-19 statistics by county, state and the United States as a whole. According to the Coronavirus Numbers webpage, 185,177 vaccines have been administered in Sonoma County as of March 15. 

The California Blueprint for a Safer Economy website states that tier requirements are set to adjust again when the state reaches four million vaccines administered. Updated information on tier requirements can be found on the California Blueprint for a Safer Economy website along with vaccination and testing information.