Coronavirus updates: 5.7 million Californians live where closures may return, Placer sees jump
A trend of increasing coronavirus activity across various parts of California since mid-October presents the possibility of widespread business closures or otherwise tightening restrictions as officials look to fend off another surge heading into winter.
The California Department of Public Health in a weekly update Wednesday only formally moved three relatively small Northern California counties to different tiers within the state’s reopening framework, which determines what types of businesses and activities are permitted and under which sets of restrictions they must operate.
But the state-released data noted 13 others, including all four in the immediate Sacramento region, did not meet the required metrics of their current tier levels for the survey week of Oct. 18 to Oct. 24. Just a handful of small counties are eligible to be promoted to a looser tier next week.
That puts each of those 13 counties — Amador, Contra Costa, El Dorado, Modoc, Mono, Placer, Sacramento, San Diego, Santa Cruz, Siskiyou, Stanislaus, Trinity and Yolo — at risk of demotion to a more restrictive stage.
Barring a state-granted exemption through an “adjudication” process (in which above-listed Placer County is currently engaged), or a change to the tier system itself, any of the 13 that don’t see their infection numbers improve back to their current tiers’ requirement for the survey week ending on Halloween will be moved down one tier next Tuesday.
Demotion from red to the strictest purple tier is the harshest move. It means restaurants, gyms, shopping centers, places of worship and a few other types of businesses and activities must shut down for indoor operations for a minimum of three weeks.
Four of those 13 counties combining for more than 5.7 million residents — Sacramento, Yolo, San Diego and Stanislaus — are currently in the red tier.
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With 10 counties totaling nearly 17 million residents already in purple, that means it’s plausible that more than half of California’s population could be living in the strictest possible status within the state’s economic reopening system by next week.
Sacramento County public health chief Dr. Peter Beilenson was among local health officials to express concern, telling The Sacramento Bee this week that people should avoid gatherings and consider celebrating Thanksgiving virtually this year.
Yolo County, following Wednesday’s update from the state, immediately put out a statement saying that demotion to the purple tier appears likely and urging residents to “take personal responsibility.”
To date, California has reported close to 945,000 lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 and is approaching 18,000 deaths from the respiratory disease. In the four-county Sacramento region, where nearly 2.4 million people reside, over 36,000 have tested positive and more than 630 have died.
Statewide case totals and the test positivity rate have increased steadily since mid-October, and hospitalization and intensive care unit numbers started to spike about two weeks after that uptick began, as has been the typical delay throughout the pandemic. California’s raw numbers are still well below the state’s summer surge, and are less concerning than the record-setting totals recently observed in other parts of the U.S., but they also broke more than a month of plateau.
And, as Beilenson noted, winter is coming. Thanksgiving and colder weather will soon drive people toward more indoor gatherings, where risk of virus transmission is believed to be significantly higher than outdoors. Those are challenges that cannot be ignored as the region and state try to keep spread of the coronavirus manageable and hospitals unencumbered.
Closer look at COVID-19 data in struggling counties
The weekly tier list from CDPH considers two or three different metrics, depending on the size of the county.
For all counties, the state looks at the daily rate of new infections per 100,000 residents and at test positivity as a percentage. For counties above 106,000 residents, officials also look at a health equity metric, which observes test positivity for what the state considers to be a county’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods.
The state data this week shows something of a head-scratcher at first glance: 11 of the 13 counties at risk of demotion had daily infection rates reach the red-tier or purple-tier ranges for the week ending Oct. 24, even though their positivity rates stayed one or two tiers better in the orange level.
But in nine of those 11, test positivity increased compared to last week’s data survey, in some cases dramatically.
Siskiyou’s blew up more than tenfold, from 0.4% to 4.5%. Tiny Modoc County, which has had reporting inconsistencies throughout the pandemic, went from 0% to 2.8%. Amador County more than doubled, 1.1% to 2.6%, and neighboring El Dorado nearly doubled, 1.1% to 2.1%.
Sacramento and Yolo counties each increased more than half a percentage point, to their most recent respective figures of 3.4% and 2.7%. And Placer County moved nearly a full point, to 3.4% in this week’s update from 2.5% last week. The handful of other counties moved marginally.
What do all these numbers and percentages mean, and why do they matter?
Effectively, the rates and their trends appear to show that the state’s tiered thresholds for new cases per 100,000 have been a tougher test for counties to pass than the test positivity benchmark — but for most counties failing in the former metric, the latter has also been on the rise.
That connection is no surprise. The two numbers are closely related, and change in one figure should correlate with another unless there’s a significant difference in the amount of tests performed week-to-week.
Health officials consider test positivity a key metric because it can monitor true spread of the virus while controlling for testing fluctuations, large or small. The World Health Organization has said communities should not reopen their economies until test positivity for COVID-19 is below 5%. In California, that mark is the cutoff between the red and orange tiers; for red to purple, it’s 8%.
What’s particularly concerning in the Sacramento region is that even though each county meets the orange threshold for that figure, all four local health offices in their own data dashboards report that their test positivity rates have been climbing steadily since mid-October or earlier.
Placer County’s health dashboard shows its test positivity rate double from 1.7% on Sept. 30 to 3.4% for the week ending Oct. 24, then swelling to 3.7% two days later by Oct. 26. El Dorado on Wednesday reported its positivity at 2.3%, having been as low as 1.0% in an Oct. 23 county update.
Yolo’s dashboard shows test positivity there jumping from 3.7% Sept. 30 to 6.9% by Oct. 30. And Sacramento went from 1.9% on Oct. 10 to 3.2% by Halloween.
In other words, unless there are discrepancies, data errors or a broader change in the state’s tier process or calculations, there’s little to suggest a rapid reversal of the trend that currently threatens to demote those four counties to tighter tiers.
What’s causing the spike near California’s capital? In Placer County, public health director and interim health officer Dr. Robert Oldham recently said contact tracers determined about 16% of positive cases in October had attended a large gathering, the most in any month of the pandemic. In Sacramento and Yolo counties, major outbreaks at a few long-term senior care facilities have also contributed to the increase.
On top of all of this, the recently rising rates don’t even account yet for the potential influence of Halloween gatherings or in-person voting on Election Day. The potential COVID-19 impact of those key dates won’t show up in the data until mid-November, given the incubation period for the virus and lags due to reporting times.
Six-county Sacramento area reaches 40,000 cases
The four-county capital region plus the Yuba-Sutter bi-county area north of it have combined for more than 654 reported COVID-19 deaths and on Thursday surpassed 40,000 lab-confirmed infections since the start of the pandemic.
Sacramento County has recorded a total of 27,278 cases and 506 deaths in the past eight months. Health officials reported 235 new cases Thursday, one of the highest daily totals in weeks, following 159 on Wednesday and 168 Tuesday.
The county has now confirmed 43 deaths from Oct. 1 through Oct. 28. Just over 115 died in September and nearly 180 died in August.
There are 94 patients hospitalized with coronavirus in Sacramento County as of Thursday, an increase by eight since Tuesday, according to state data. That figure had hovered mainly between 75 and 90 for the bulk of October. The number of ICU patients is at 21, having been as low as 12 in late October.
Yolo County, has reported 3,395 total infections and 62 deaths from COVID-19, with two new fatalities reported Monday and Wednesday. The county reported 32 new cases Thursday, the highest number this week following 19 Wednesday, 25 Tuesday and 17 Monday.
Yolo has eight patients in hospitals with COVID-19 as of Thursday, down one from Wednesday, with three still in ICUs.
Placer County has reported 4,640 total infections and 60 deaths, reporting 98 cases Thursday following 15 on Wednesday and 60 on Tuesday.
New cases are rising sharply in Placer County. Classified by episode date — the date a positive test specimen was actually taken, as opposed to the date the county reported that positive result publicly — the county says it had at least 406 new infections from the final 10 days of October, a total that could still grow.
That’s the most in any 10-day stretch since the summer surge. Exactly three months ago, Placer County had 412 new cases emerge for the 10 days ending Aug. 5. The county is testing more people now than it was then, but Placer’s test positivity rate is currently at its highest point since early September, while still currently on an uptrend.
Placer reported on its local hospitalization dashboard Thursday that it had 32 patients in hospital beds being treated specifically for COVID-19, including five in ICUs. State data for Placer County shows 35 hospitalized and four in ICUs. Unlike the county, the state does not break down hospitalized cases by cause of admission.
State data show Placer’s COVID-19 hospitalization total tripling in the past two weeks. The figure had been 12 as of Oct. 22.
El Dorado County is one of a small number of counties in California with a single-digit death toll, with just four fatalities since the start of the pandemic. Health officials have reported a tally of 1,469 cases, adding 10 Thursday after 15 each the previous two days.
El Dorado has two hospitalized COVID-19 patients in ICUs, state data from Thursday shows.
Sutter County health officials have reported a total of 1,977 people positive for coronavirus and 12 deaths, adding 13 cases Thursday for the second consecutive day. One person was hospitalized in an ICU on Thursday, according to county health officials.
Yuba County officials have reported 1,428 infections, with 15 new cases Thursday, and a total of 10 deaths since the pandemic began. Yuba has one patient hospitalized, not in the ICU.
Sutter and Yuba, which share a bicounty health office, are both in the red tier and did not gain a week toward promotion or demotion this week.
World, U.S. still smashing records
Data compiled by Johns Hopkins University showed a reported total of over 685,000 new cases worldwide on Wednesday, shattering a single-day record by 115,000.
Anchoring the grim mark, the United States hit 100,000 for the first time in one day, as surges in Europe and South America continue.
Since the start of the pandemic, more than 48.5 million people have tested positive for COVID-19 worldwide and over 1,231,000 have died. Nearly one-fifth of each at over 9.6 million cases and 234,000 deaths have come from the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins data.
Following the U.S. in all-time death toll are Brazil at 161,000, India at 124,000 and Mexico at 93,000. After that are four European nations: the United Kingdom is over 48,000 dead, Italy is over 40,000, France has more than 39,000, Spain is over 38,000 and Iran is just shy of 37,000. Between 32,00 and 35,000 have died in each of Peru, Argentina and Colombia. Russia has surpassed 29,000 dead, and South Africa is approaching 20,000.
By infections, India comes after the U.S. at 8.3 million confirmed coronavirus cases, followed by Brazil at nearly 5.6 million. Russia is almost to 1.7 million and France is over 1.6 million. The United Kingdom, Colombia, Argentina and Spain each have reported between 1.1 million and 1.3 million cases. Peru and Mexico have each reported over 900,000.
This story was originally published November 5, 2020 at 9:49 AM with the headline "Coronavirus updates: 5.7 million Californians live where closures may return, Placer sees jump."
