Many Bay Area counties expect to return to purple tier

After California lifted regional restrictions on Monday, counties around the Bay Area wasted no time in getting plans in order on how to move forward with some limited reopenings. 

Before plans are executed, the state has to assign each county to a color-coded tier on its reopening blueprint that will determine what activities and businesses can resume and in what capacity. 

San Francisco, Alameda, Sonoma, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa counties all expect to return to the state's most restrictive purple tier, which only allows for some indoor and outdoor operations to continue. Official confirmation is expected to come from the state on Tuesday.

Under the purple tier, restaurants can offer outdoor dining, gyms and fitness classes can operate outdoors, and hair salons and barbershops can welcome customers back inside. 

San Francisco plans to resume purple tier activities and businesses on Tuesday. It's unclear as to when other Bay Area counties plan to kick in the new changes. 

San Francisco said it's keeping the 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew in place for now and said it does not want to quickly roll back any restrictions only to reimpose them if COVID numbers begin to creep up again.

"We're taking the initial steps in a situation where the rate of the virus is still relatively high, we want to see that number continue to come down before we release that 10 to five order," said the city's publich health director Dr. Grant Colfax.

The Bay Area regional sttay at home order was put into place by the state on Dec.17 due to surging cases and hospitalizations that threatened ICU capacity. At this point, the region’s ICU capacity has stabilized and cases and hospitalizations are trending down, prompting the state to lift the order.