Sacramento County coronavirus death toll continues surging; 91 now dead from virus
More than 90 people have now died of coronavirus in Sacramento County after public health officials reported Tuesday that eight more people had died in the pandemic.
County health officials said 91 people have now died of the virus since March, up from the reported 83 deaths a day earlier. Those eight additional deaths occurred over the past four weeks, but county health officials had just confirmed Tuesday that those deaths were caused by coronavirus.
County spokeswoman Janna Haynes in an email said though those eight deaths were newly reported, they occurred between late June and the current week: one the week ending June 27, three the week ending July 4, two last week and two more this week since Sunday.
“The daily death count is updated with the COVID confirmed deaths that public health was notified of the prior day,” she explained of the county’s reporting process. “Sometimes it’s a delay in notification that a death occurred, but it may also be a delay in determining cause of death and contributing factors.
“It’s possible for someone who is COVID+ to die of something unrelated and not be counted in the COVID death count. Sometimes we are waiting for confirmed cause of death and that to be reflected in the death certificate.”
Sacramento County reported 14 fatalities from July 6 through Sunday, then none Monday. Of the 22 deaths in the past nine days, eight have come in people younger than 65, officials say. Only five of the first 69 deaths came in that younger age group.
The county also reported 224 new lab-confirmed cases Tuesday for a total of 5,938 to date.
More than 3,700 infections and a total of 49 deaths have come within Sacramento city limits. Of the remaining fatalities, 17 have come in unincorporated parts of Sacramento County, nine have been in Citrus Heights, seven in Rancho Cordova, six in Elk Grove and three in Folsom.
State health officials in a Tuesday data update said there were 176 patients in Sacramento County with confirmed COVID-19 cases, 61 of them in the ICU, both all-time highs that have been on the rise since about mid-June.
In another update Tuesday, Sacramento County reported that 7.1 percent of more than 19,000 tests it performed last week, July 5-11, came back positive, up half a percentage point from the previous week. The most recent percentage matches the highest rate the county has recorded since the start of the stay-at-home order, with the rate previously peaking at 7.1 percent the week ending April 13.
The county’s average positivity rate, which is a metric health experts point to as a more accurate indicator of the true spread of the virus than raw case numbers due to increasing capacity for testing, has more than tripled in the past month and continues to climb. Only 1.9 percent of tests conducted the week ending June 11 returned positive. The rolling seven-day average stayed at or below 2 percent from May 3 through June 16, and bottomed out at 0.8 the week ending May 21 — three days before county hospitals reported their lowest totals of the entire pandemic for confirmed cases in hospital beds and the ICU, according to state data.
The World Health Organization discourages business reopening at above 5 percent positivity, which Sacramento has been above since June 26; and the state health department automatically adds counties to the watchlist if their rate surpasses 8 percent.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday announced the immediate statewide closure of all indoor business at restaurants, wineries, theaters, zoos, museums, card rooms, bars and family entertainment centers.
In addition, shopping malls, gyms, indoor church worship, nail salons and barber shops were ordered to shut down in counties that have been on the state’s monitoring list for troubling coronavirus trends for three or more days. Those closures apply to 31 counties in total — about 80 percent of all Californians — including Sacramento and neighboring Yolo and Placer counties.
Heeding Newsom’s sweeping announcement, Sacramento County health officials immediately announced the closure of most indoor businesses and activities
Sacramento County health chief Dr. Peter Beilenson on Monday acknowledged the spread locally has been happening more in family and friend gatherings, but said there are numerous cases of clusters happening connected to recently reopened businesses.
He said, in retrospect, the state and the county likely reopened some businesses more quickly than they should have, but defended those earlier reopenings, saying state and local health officials were also weighing the impact on the economy and mental health.
“There are incredibly competing demands here,” he said. “It’s a huge balancing act. It was reasonable to do some of the openings, but no one has 20-20 foresight.”
The new wave of statewide closures are meant to sharply curtail an spiraling number of infections in California, now at more than 336,000, according to the latest numbers released by the state public health department. Over 7,000 Californians have died from the respiratory disease.
This story was originally published July 14, 2020 at 10:54 AM.
