Sacramento County coronavirus death toll at 63 as infections, hospitalizations surge
Another death from the coronavirus has been reported in Sacramento County, the fourth this week as the region has also seen case totals and hospitalization rates rise rapidly over the past couple of weeks.
The most recent COVID-19 death came in the city of Sacramento, the 30th there since the beginning of the pandemic. Countywide, public health officials have reported a total of 63 deaths due to the highly contagious virus as of Thursday morning.
The county disclosed one death Wednesday, two Monday and three last week.
In addition to the capital city’s 30 deaths, 12 have come in unincorporated parts of the county, eight in Citrus Heights, seven in Rancho Cordova, and three in each of Elk Grove and Folsom.
The county also confirmed 28 more lab-positive cases of the virus as of Thursday’s update for a running total of 1,670, according to the county’s online COVID-19 dashboard. The dashboard estimates 1,262 of these cases are likely recovered, which would mean 345 cases are considered currently active, up from 318 on Wednesday.
The local dashboard also shows 37 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 and 13 in ICUs as of Wednesday, up from 36 and 12 Monday.
Sacramento County Public Health Officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye said her contact tracing team has linked many of the recent severe, hospitalized cases to things like family gatherings inside homes, which remain a violation of the state and county health orders. She suggested the recent permitted reopening of restaurants, stores, barbershops, hair salons and other businesses may have convinced people that the virus risk has gone away.
Despite that, the entire four-county Sacramento region plans to reopen a number of Phase 3 businesses, including movie theaters, bars, gyms and more, after receiving permission to do so from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office.
Kasirye told The Sacramento Bee on Tuesday that it was too early to determine the impact of about two weeks worth of daily large protest gatherings would have on coronavirus activity in the Sacramento area, but said there is a “certain level of nervousness” regarding an outbreak, which could show itself in the numbers within a matter of days.
Statewide, the California Department of Public Health on Wednesday reported that at least 4,776 people have died among over 136,000 lab-positive COVID-19 cases. The death toll rose by 79 that day, up from 44 in Tuesday’s update and 27 on Monday.
According to data compiled by the Bay Area News Group, 108 new COVID-19 deaths were reported Wednesday for a total of 4,854 statewide. California could, at the current pace, reach the 5,000 death milestone this weekend.
New cases continue to climb in California, largely in hard-hit Los Angeles County, as well as in Riverside and Imperial counties. Some 67,000 cases, 48 percent of the California’s total, have been reported in Los Angeles County.
Latest Sacramento-area numbers
The remainder of the four-county Sacramento region — El Dorado, Placer and Yolo counties — have not reported any coronavirus deaths in the past two weeks.
El Dorado County public health officials report 111 total confirmed cases as of Thursday afternoon, after two infections were reported Monday, and still no confirmed deaths from the virus. A person battling COVID-19 who was in intensive care on Tuesday, was removed from the list of hospitalizations. Of the 111 cases, 21 are active and 90 are recovered, the county says.
Placer County has seen a recent surge in cases, now reporting 327 infections as of Thursday morning. Nine people have died, 124 are active cases and 194 have likely recovered. Ten lab-positive patients are in the hospital, with two in the ICU, each count decreasing by one since Monday.
After going from April 3 to May 29 without 10 or more new cases in any single day, Placer’s infection total has grown by double digits in nine of the 13 daily updates since then, with 13 new cases reported Thursday.
Yolo County reported 13 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday; two of them in Winters and the county’s unincorporated areas and 11 in Woodland, which has the most reported cases in the county with 111. The county’s total number of COVID-19 cases is 240. So far, 24 people have died in the county, with 17 of them connected to Stollwood Convalescent Hospital in Woodland. Yolo does not report recoveries or list current hospitalizations, but one metric on its public health dashboard says that no more than three COVID-19 patients have been hospitalized at any one time in the past 14 days.
World coronavirus numbers
More than 7.4 million people have been infected by the coronavirus worldwide as of Thursday, according to a database maintained by Johns Hopkins University.
Of those cases, just over 2 million are from the United States, or about one in four.
The global death toll continues to grow as well: The virus has now killed more than 420,000 people worldwide, including about 113,000 in the United States, the country with the highest death toll. The United Kingdom has the second highest death toll, at about 41,300.
Infections are surging in Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly in Brazil, where over 802,000 have been confirmed and close to 41,000 have died.
This story was originally published June 11, 2020 at 10:01 AM.
