With COVID-19 cases on the decline, Los Angeles and Orange counties are inching closer to being able to significantly reopen their economies.

Both heavily populated counties are now on the cusp of potentially moving into the red tier, a more permissive category of the state’s reopening road map that would allow wider indoor business operations — including at restaurants and gyms — as well as the resumption of in-person classes for students in grades 7 through 12.

The earliest either county could advance is two weeks from now, and they’ll only do so if select measures of coronavirus transmission hit certain state-set benchmarks.

But officials in both counties said they believe progress is on the horizon.

Read the full story on LATimes.com.