Four new coronavirus deaths announced in city of Sacramento, region reaches 43 dead
Four new deaths from the coronavirus were announced Wednesday morning in an update by Sacramento County public health officials, all of them within the city of Sacramento. Two more deaths were also reported in Placer County.
The county of 1.5 million people has reported 853 confirmed infections and 32 fatalities from COVID-19, the disease caused by the highly contagious coronavirus, as of an update just before 10 a.m. Wednesday. Of the deaths, 18 were within capital city limits, eight came in unincorporated areas, three were in Elk Grove, two in Citrus Heights and one death disclosed Tuesday occurred in Rancho Cordova.
Wednesday’s update increased the case total from 816 to 853, an uptick of 37 cases. The county reported 77 additional cases in a Tuesday update, the biggest one-day total increase, following negligible increase over the weekend. That means 114 of the 853 cases, or more than 13 percent, have been reported in less than 24 hours.
Placer County public health officials, in an update to their online dashboard minutes after Sacramento County’s, confirmed just one new lab-positive case of the coronavirus, but added two to the death toll for a total of seven.
It should be noted that a large, one-day spike in confirmed cases can be attributed not just to rapid spread of the virus, but also to a combination of potential other factors such as more widespread testing and possible lag times in the returns of test results.
For that reason, death totals have been used by some health experts and data modelers as a better indicator of the true spread of the coronavirus. Sacramento County has reported five of its 32 fatalities, or about 15 percent, since Tuesday.
Across the four-county Sacramento region, 43 people have now died of COVID-19: 32 in Sacramento County plus seven in Placer County and four in Yolo County. El Dorado County has not yet reported a coronavirus-related fatality.
