Coronavirus updates: Nationwide testing shortage deals setback to surging California
The coronavirus pandemic is becoming an increasingly urgent situation in the Sacramento region and across California as a whole, both of which are grappling with record-setting influxes of new cases and quickly filling intensive care units of some hospitals.
The newest and most severe local setback came with Monday’s announcement that Sacramento County will need to at least temporarily close five community test centers this week, all of them in underserved communities, due to a lack of testing materials caused by a nationwide supply shortage.
Those centers are at the Natomas Unified School District, South Sacramento Christian Center, Tetteh Pediatric Health in South Land Park, La Familia Counseling Center and Robertson Community Center. A testing center at St. Paul’s Missionary Baptist Church in Oak Park and the Verily testing site at Cal Expo remain open, but may face testing limitations in the near future. Residents can also obtain tests through their own health care providers, but those providers also may soon run out of testing material.
County health chief Dr. Peter Beilenson said the five impacted test centers will be shut down indefinitely. The hope, he said, is that the county will be able to reopen the sites in about two weeks, but it will depend on how fast resources can be replenished.
The county’s testing partner, UC Davis Medical Center, told county officials Monday it was unable to get some of the materials it needs to process the tests.
The supply shortage comes at a time when demand for tests is likely at its highest level. Sacramento County is now within a two-plus-week spike of new confirmed coronavirus cases and has seen its hospitalization and intensive care unit numbers soar to unprecedented highs.
Of the more than 4,500 lab-positive COVID-19 infections that Sacramento County has recorded, 76 have died, including two deaths reported Tuesday. Another 1,976 cases are classified on the county’s data dashboard as “likely recovered.”
That estimate suggests there could be roughly 2,500 active cases across the county — a figure that’s grown tenfold over the past month, up from an estimate of fewer than 250 active infections in the first week of June.
Considering the county and state’s recent emphasis on contact tracing, the problem could quickly compound itself. Health officials for weeks have used diagnostic testing as a basis to track possible sources of outbreaks, as well as to identify and inform the close contacts of an infected person to urge that they get tested. Delays or the inability for those exposed to get such a test, especially in underserved communities, threaten to derail progress in tracking and mitigating spread of the virus.
Sacramento County’s current hospitalization total for COVID-19 is closing in on 160, reaching a record-high 157 patients as of a Tuesday data update from the state health department. Of those, 41 are in the intensive care unit, the same as was reported Monday and one fewer than the 42 reported Sunday, which was the most ever for the county.
After a previous peak of 77 hospitalized cases in late April, Sacramento County whittled its way down to just seven patients with the virus at one point in late May before rocketing back up beginning in mid-June.
County hospital admissions have been outpacing releases for more than two weeks, with the tally having increased every single day dating back to June 18, state data show.
Across California, more than 277,000 people have now tested positive for the coronavirus, with yet another record set Monday: the state disclosed 11,529 new confirmed infections in its daily update. At least 6,448 people have died of COVID-19 across California. After Sunday’s 18 reported deaths and Monday’s 6 represented the lowest single-day tallies since late March, state health officials disclosed 111 more deaths Tuesday, the second-highest one-day increase of the pandemic.
Statewide hospitalizations and ICU patients with confirmed COVID-19 cases are also at all-time highs. California reported Monday 5,980 patients were hospitalized, with 1,746 of them in the ICU. Those figures were near 3,100 and 1,050, respectively, as of June 14.
Faced with the surge, Gov. Gavin Newsom last week rolled back some of the state’s economic reopening, a little less than two weeks after making mask use mandatory in most public and indoor settings. He ordered 19 counties that were on the state’s watch list for at least three straight days — which included Sacramento and Los Angeles and encompassed nearly 30 million of California’s residents — to immediately close down bars and indoor activities at number of other business types, including dine-in restaurants and movie theaters, for at least three weeks.
As of Tuesday morning, closures had expanded to include 21 total counties.
‘Overwhelmed’ laboratories: More on California’s testing situation
The state has conducted close to 4.9 million tests to date, well exceeding 100,000 daily tests on a few occasions in recent weeks. The testing average over the past 14 days is almost exactly 100,000 per day.
But even with test capacity ramping up steadily and significantly, the percentage of tests coming back positive continues to climb. Health experts say test positivity rate is a good indicator of how quickly the virus is spreading. The World Health Organizations suggests a rate of lower than 5 percent before reopening the economy; California puts individual counties on notice when they hit 8 percent or higher.
Over the 14 days leading up to Tuesday, 6.8 percent of all tests statewide came back positive. In the seven days heading into Tuesday, 6.7 percent returned positive, according to a state health dashboard. Positivity bottomed out around 4.1 percent in late May and stayed relatively stable for a few weeks at the pandemic’s calmest period post-shutdown, but then started to climb around mid-June, surpassing 5 percent on June 23.
The state is now also faced with a testing supply shortage, California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly warned Saturday. A shortage of any significant length will almost certainly elevate the test positivity rate even higher, with Ghaly urging laboratories “to prioritize testing turnaround for individuals who are most at risk of spreading the virus to others.”
“As more states begin to scale their testing capabilities, new constraints are materializing within the supply chain,” Ghaly said Saturday. “Simultaneously, laboratories are becoming overwhelmed with high numbers of specimens, slowing down processing timelines.
“These delays will present significant challenges in (1) our ability to care for people in the hospital where testing helps us make appropriate treatment decisions and (2) our ability to appropriately isolate those who are sick in order to box in the virus and cut transmission rates.”
California Assembly on hiatus after lawmaker tests positive
Later that day, a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon announced the Assembly was “closed until further notice,” which suspended legislative hearings previously scheduled for Monday.
Burke is the first California lawmaker known to have caught the virus.
The announcement comes four days after the Assembly set new restrictions following an employee testing positive.
Burke said she had “mask to mask” exposure to that employee, who was last at the Capitol on June 26, that same day.
Burke was notified of the exposure last Friday and tested positive Saturday, she tweeted.
“Thank you to everyone who has reached out with well wishes,” Burke wrote on Monday. “We are fine, but it is of the utmost importance that everyone stay safe, be healthy & remain vigilant.”
COVID-19 patient surge not yet overwhelming Sacramento hospitals
Leaders at UC Davis Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente, Dignity Health and Sutter Health said California’s early stay-at-home order, issued in mid-March, gave them the chance to learn and prepare for potential surges and could hopefully keep their facilities from being overwhelmed in the way that those in other hard-hit areas were, including in China, Italy, New York, New Orleans and Detroit.
One of the key discoveries, the head of UCD Medical Center said, has been veering away from ventilator use in many cases. Studies nationally and experiences locally have shown many severely sick patients do better if offered other treatment protocols.
“In the beginning of this, especially in New York, everybody had a breathing tube and a mechanical ventilator, and that apparently made worse the lung inflammation, and now we know that’s not the way to go about it,” UC Davis Health CEO Dr. David Lubarsky said. “We really changed our treatments. What we’ve learned is we don’t want to intervene too early and too dramatically.”
The major hospital systems operating in the Sacramento area report they have more than enough hospital beds to handle hundreds more patients that could pour in. But ICU beds are becoming limited.
“I am optimistic that we will handle it,” said Dr. David Witt, national infectious disease leader for Kaiser Permanente. “I’m not looking forward to it. But we will handle it.”
Sacramento County health officer Dr. Oliva Kasirye on Monday said she’s concerned by rising patient numbers, but is hoping the new infection rates will drop in the next few weeks as more people wear masks and as a result of the county shutting down indoor dining at restaurants last week.
Latest Sacramento-area numbers: 113 dead, 6,400 infected
The four-county region of Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer and Yolo counties has surpassed 6,400 total confirmed infections. Seven total new deaths reported by Sacramento County health officials Monday and Tuesday, plus two reported deaths out of Yolo since last Friday, have increased the region’s combined death toll to 113.
Of the four, only Sacramento was on the state watch list as of Monday morning. But El Dorado, Placer and Yolo counties have all suffered recent setbacks in the pandemic, infection and hospitalization figures show.
Sacramento County reports 4,566 confirmed coronavirus infections since the pandemic started, of which 76 have died, according to the county’s data dashboard.
Placer County public health officials reported 27 new cases Tuesday morning for an all-time total of 938, following a record-high 49 new cases Sunday and 34 more Monday morning. Placer officials say 28 patients are hospitalized and five of them in the ICU. Eleven people have died of COVID-19 in Placer County. Roughly 330 cases can be considered active.
Yolo County reported 22 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday afternoon, after adding 29 new cases Monday to the county’s total of 723 cases. The county added one new death Friday and another Sunday for a total of 26. County officials disclosed 32 new infections each on Saturday and Sunday.
El Dorado County on Tuesday evening reported four new COVID-19 cases after adding 36 new cases on Monday that had accumulated over the weekend. The county, which now has a total of 264 cases, has fared best in the Sacramento area for coronavirus activity. The county still is reporting no confirmed COVID-19 deaths, but has seen case totals climb faster in the past several days. Half of the county’s cases have been reported in the Lake Tahoe region.
North of the capital region, Sutter County has reported 71 cases since last Friday: a record-setting 23 new COVID-19 cases Friday, 15 on Saturday, 10 on Sunday and another 23 reported Monday afternoon. Those infections account for more than one-quarter of the county’s all-time infection total of 275. Three people have died in Sutter County, and 13 are currently in the hospital.
Yuba County reported 11 new COVID-19 cases Monday and now has a total of 139 cases. The county reported its second death of the pandemic on Saturday; the other came in early April. Six were hospitalized in Yuba as of Monday’s update from the Yuba-Sutter bicounty health office.
Over 540,000 dead worldwide, 131,000 in U.S.
More than 11.7 million have tested positive for COVID-19 worldwide and over 540,000 have died as of Tuesday evening, according to data maintained by Johns Hopkins University.
About one-quarter of each — nearly 3 million infections and over 131,000 deaths — have come in the United States, according to Johns Hopkins.
After the U.S., the coronavirus has hit hardest in Brazil, where 1.6 million have tested positive and over 66,000 have died as of Tuesday evening. Next by death toll are the United Kingdom at over 44,000, Italy at nearly 35,000, Mexico at over 31,000, France at just under 30,000, Spain at more than 28,000 and India at over 20,000, according to Johns Hopkins.
What is COVID-19? How is the coronavirus spread?
Coronavirus is spread through contact between people within 6 feet of each other, especially through coughing and sneezing that expels respiratory droplets that land in the mouths or noses of people nearby. The CDC says it’s possible to catch the disease COVID-19 by touching something that has the virus on it, and then touching your own face, “but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.”
Symptoms of the virus that causes COVID-19 include fever, cough and shortness of breath, which may occur two days to two weeks after exposure. Most develop only mild symptoms, but some people develop more severe symptoms, including pneumonia, which can be fatal. The disease is especially dangerous to the elderly and others with weaker immune systems.
This story was originally published July 7, 2020 at 8:42 AM.
