Coronavirus updates: California COVID-19 rates were already on rise before Halloween
With its raw numbers moderate but trending upward, and a flurry of key moments still to come within the next few weeks, California faces what could be a critical inflection point in the coronavirus pandemic.
A long, steady decline from the state’s summer surge turned into a month-long plateau, with essentially all important COVID-19 metrics holding stable from mid-September to mid-October.
But in about the last two weeks, the state’s coronavirus numbers have risen sharply.
The rate of new infections increased by 36%, from a rolling 14-day average of about 3,100 new daily cases as of Oct. 17 to more than 4,200 by Halloween, according to the California Department of Public Health. The average stands at about 4,275 as of a Monday morning update from CDPH, which saw the state’s all-time, lab-confirmed infection total tick past 930,000.
For comparison, California’s summer surge started to show up in state data around June 16. From then to June 30, the daily infection average basically doubled, going from 2,800 to 5,650 a day. But during that time, the rate of testing also grew by 50%; in the last two weeks of October, it only increased by about 7%.
The statewide test positivity rate grew from 2.5% to 3.2% in the last two weeks of October, which is about a 28% boost. From June 16 to June 30, it jumped from 4.4% to 6.3%, an increase of roughly 43%.
A backlog of several thousand cases from Los Angeles County accounts for some of the recent increase in infection total, but it cannot explain the spike in positive test percentage. And, even after the backlog was cleared, the state has seen higher daily case totals than had been typical earlier in October. On Halloween, the state reported 5,000 cases in a day for the first time since early September.
Hospital numbers have moved less in recent weeks, but the state’s total for patients with confirmed COVID-19 cases exceeded 2,500 in Saturday’s update, and the number in intensive care units surpassed 700 in Monday’s update, with each of those marks being hit for the first time since late September. The key difference, of course, is that in September they were trending down, not up.
Typically, time of progression for the respiratory disease means COVID-19 hospitalization rates trail trends in overall infections by about two to three weeks.
Hundreds of miles north of L.A. in California’s capital region, infections and positive rates have ticked up in Sacramento, Placer and Yolo counties since mid-October. Even El Dorado, which has had lower COVID-19 activity than its neighboring counties for effectively the entire pandemic, reported that its test positivity rate doubled from 1% on Oct. 23 to 2% last Friday, one week later.
More than 39,000 residents of the six-county Sacramento region — Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer, Yolo, Sutter and Yuba — have tested positive for COVID-19 during the pandemic. The counties account for nearly 650 of the state’s more than 17,600 reported coronavirus deaths.
Local health officials have pointed to higher numbers of social gatherings and a few major nursing home outbreaks as likely contributing factors to growing infection rates in the Sacramento area.
Election, Thanksgiving and more make for tough November
Recent coronavirus developments are made more troubling by what’s on the immediate horizon.
Halloween has ended, and despite warnings and pleas from health officials, the holiday was still virtually certain to bring about more parties and get togethers than prior, recent weekends.
Holidays and holiday weekends throughout the pandemic have been a point of concern and of emphasis in messaging from health and government leaders throughout California, including Gov. Gavin Newsom. They’ve urged the public to celebrate responsibly, at various points blaming spikes on COVID-19 being spread at parties when friends and extended family members are too lax in social distancing and mask protocols.
Then there’s Election Day. While the health crisis has led to ballots being mailed in at record rates in Sacramento as they have across much of the country, many people will still vote in-person on Tuesday. Even if social distancing, facial covering and sanitation requirements are closely adhered to, any scenario in which large numbers of people are waiting in lines at centralized locations will present at least some elevated risk of virus spread.
Given incubation and reporting times, it will likely take until about mid-November for the data to start reflecting the extent to which Halloween and Election Day impacted COVID-19 activity.
And those are just two of the key dates. Thanksgiving is less than four weeks away. For Sacramento County, at least one K-12 school district, Folsom Cordova Unified, plans to allow students as early as next Thursday, Nov. 12.
To top it all off, cooler weather is coming to California. Highs in the 80s early this week in Sacramento are forecast to plummet to the low 60s by Friday, according to the National Weather Service.
Health officials have long said indoor gatherings present a higher likelihood of COVID-19 spreading than gathering outdoors. With Daylight Saving Time over, moving sunset one hour earlier, evening outdoor gatherings will become less feasible.
Latest Sacramento-area numbers: Local case total nearing 40,000
The six-county Sacramento region has now combined for 647 reported COVID-19 deaths and more than 39,000 confirmed infections over the course of the pandemic.
Sacramento County has recorded a total of 26,716 lab-positive cases and 502 deaths during the pandemic. Health officials on Monday added 531 new cases for the three-day period of Saturday to Monday, an average of 177 per day. The county reported 167 new cases last Friday, 136 on Thursday and 132 on Wednesday.
The county has now confirmed 40 deaths from Oct. 1 through Oct. 27, surpassing April’s total of 34 for fourth-most in a month. Continued death confirmations for September have pushed that month’s death toll to 116, according to the local health office. Nearly 180 county residents died in August after 87 died in July.
There are 85 patients hospitalized with coronavirus in Sacramento County as of Monday, the same as last Friday after falling below 80 over the weekend. The number of ICU patients is now at 21, steadily rising to that figure from 12 as of last Wednesday.
Sacramento County is in the red tier of the state’s reopening guidelines, the second-most restrictive.
Yolo County, which joined Sacramento in the red tier in late September, has reported 3,320 total infections and 61 deaths from COVID-19. The county reported one new death and 17 cases Monday
Yolo has five patients in hospitals with COVID-19 as of Monday, half of the 10 reported Friday, but with four still in ICUs.
Placer County has reported 4,467 total infections and 59 deaths, reporting 114 new cases for Saturday through Monday for a three-day average of 38. The county added 63 new cases Friday, following 42 on Thursday and 41 on Wednesday. All are among the highest daily totals since the end of summer.
Placer reported on its hospitalization dashboard, last updated Monday, that it had 25 patients in hospital beds with COVID-19, all of them being treated specifically for the disease, including four in ICUs. State data from Monday shows 31 hospitalized and six in ICUs in Placer County. Unlike the county, the state does not break down hospitalized cases by cause of admission.
Test positivity rate in Placer is spiking rapidly, according to the county health department dashboard, up to 3.4% for the seven days ending Oct. 24. The rate had been half that at 1.7% for the final week of September, and at 2.4% as recently as Oct. 14.
Placer is in the orange tier.
El Dorado County is one of a small number of counties with a single-digit death toll, with just four fatalities since the start of the pandemic. Health officials have reported a total of 1,429, adding 41 cases from Saturday to Monday.
El Dorado had four patients hospitalized with none in ICUs as of Monday morning, according to the state. Single-digit figures represent a small sample size, but the figure ties with a handful of August days for the county’s highest hospitalized total since five were in beds July 1. For long stretches from mid-August through October, the county had zero or one patient hospitalized with the disease at any given time.
The county remains in the orange tier.
Sutter County health officials have reported a total of 1,938 people positive for coronavirus and 12 dead, with data last updated Monday afternoon to add 26 new cases from the weekend and Monday. Two people were hospitalized with COVID-19 as of then, with none in the ICU, according to county health officials.
Yuba County officials have reported a total of 1,383 infections and 10 deaths. Yuba has four patients hospitalized with no ICU cases.
Sutter and Yuba are both in the red tier.
World death toll hits 1.2 million
The worldwide infection total for COVID-19 is closing in on 47 million, and over 1.2 million of those people have died of the respiratory disease, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
The U.S. leads the world in both counts: Over 231,000 dead and more than 9.2 million lab-confirmed cases as of Monday afternoon.
Anchored by new cases in the United States, Europe, India and South America, the world set another record Friday, with over 565,000 new cases pouring in.
Following the U.S. by death toll are Brazil at 160,000, India at close to 123,000, Mexico at nearly 92,000, the United Kingdom at almost 47,000 and Italy at just over 39,000. More than 37,000 have died of the virus in France, over 36,000 have died in Spain and Iran is nearing 36,000. Peru is approaching 35,000 dead. Colombia and Argentina each have reported more than 31,000 dead. Russia recently surpassed 28,000.
India is after the U.S. in terms of total infections, with over 8.2 million reported. Then comes Brazil at 5.5 million, Russia at 1.6 million and France at nearly 1.5 million. Spain, Argentina, Colombia and the United Kingdom have all had more than 1 million people test positive. Mexico and Peru have surpassed 900,000.
This story was originally published November 2, 2020 at 9:56 AM with the headline "Coronavirus updates: California COVID-19 rates were already on rise before Halloween."
