Sacramento County passes 5,000 coronavirus cases, reports 10th COVID-19 death in 5 days
Sacramento County reached another coronavirus milestone Friday, surpassing 5,000 total cases over the course of the pandemic.
County health officials reported 220 new lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases and one additional fatality, the 79th death for the county and 41st within Sacramento city limits.
Of 5,152 cases now reported all time, only 2,372 are classified as “likely recovered” by the county health office. That means more than 2,700 cases are considered active, a total that has grown rapidly in the past month. The figure had been below 250 in early June.
Ten of Sacramento County’s deaths have come this week, with five reported Monday and two each on Tuesday and Wednesday. Friday’s reported death and another earlier this week are among seven for the county involving patients younger than 65.
Almost 2,200 cases have emerged from June 23 to July 6, the most recent 14-day stretch for which the county has data available. Those two weeks account for 42 percent of the pandemic’s four-month total.
Hospitalization totals have been rising for about three weeks, in Sacramento and across California. The confirmed COVID-19 patient total for Sacramento County stood at 150 as of a Friday update to state data, close to quadruple its total from mid-June. Of those, 45 are in the ICU.
Statewide, more than 6,100 patients are hospitalized with the coronavirus and over 1,775 are in the ICU, up from about 3,100 and 1,100, respectively, three weeks ago. Both the Sacramento region and California as a whole had had relatively stable hospitalization rates for about two months, from mid-April to mid-June.
Five other nearby counties — El Dorado, Placer, Yolo, Sutter and Yuba — have combined for roughly 3,000 total cases and 45 more deaths during the pandemic. All of the six-county greater Sacramento area, except for El Dorado, was on the state health department’s watch list for elevated COVID-19 activity as of Friday morning. Yolo, Sutter and Yuba have reported a combined seven deaths since July 3.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on July 1 ordered bars and other indoor business types to close in counties that have been on the watch list more than three consecutive days. Sacramento County was on the list at that time, Yolo was added Wednesday and Placer, Sutter and Yuba joined the list Thursday.
Local health leaders have attributed Sacramento’s case clusters to friends and extended family members not adhering to social distancing or mask protocols while attending in-home gatherings, such as birthday and graduation parties, since about Memorial Day weekend.
Other contributing factors listed on the state watch list for Sacramento-area counties include workplace transmission, limited contact tracing in Yuba and Sutter counties, and outbreaks at skilled nursing facilities in Yolo.
This story was originally published July 10, 2020 at 10:58 AM.
