Surging coronavirus cases in Sacramento still linked mainly to get-togethers, officials say
The coronavirus pandemic continues to hit California’s capital region hard amid a statewide surge that has now lasted more than a month, but a top Sacramento health official said it’s still mostly private parties, not businesses reopening, that are contributing to the bulk of virus spread.
Sacramento County reported 391 new lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases Monday, breaking a one-day record of 333 set July 4 and boosting the pandemic’s all-time infection total past 7,300, according to the county’s COVID-19 data dashboard.
The record-high case total, though, resulted from new cases Monday morning plus a backlog of the nine previous days, county health chief Dr. Peter Beilenson explained. Of the 391, more than 200 new cases still came from the normal roughly three-day period for which test results are usually received, he said.
Beilenson didn’t specify the precise reason for the delay in results, but a supply shortage issue slowed commercial labs’ ability to process tests starting around early July, when California first started to experience the bottleneck.
At least 96 Sacramento County residents have now died from the respiratory disease, the health department says.
Beilenson said the county is still a couple of days away from being able to see the impacts on disease transmission from July 4 weekend and holiday revelers, given reporting time and COVID-19’s incubation period.
“The hope obviously is that people heeded the warnings and avoided gatherings,” he said.
It’ll also take another week or two for the full impact of renewed business closures, which Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered July 1 and further expanded July 13 for Sacramento and the other now nearly three dozen counties on the state health department’s watch list, to show up in the data, Beilenson said.
But he reiterated Monday that businesses openings don’t appear to have contributed to virus transmission “anywhere near as much” as private gatherings are continuing to do.
Since early June, Beilenson and county health officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye have been attributing the large numbers of new cases to get-togethers like birthday and graduation parties, which have continued in people’s homes with little to no social distancing protocols being followed. State and county orders continue to prohibit gatherings with people outside one’s own household.
“Say you have John, who’s a 25-year-old who went to a party where there were 30 or 40 people, and spread the virus... And let’s say the contact tracing didn’t identify that Julio was at the party with John, and Julio works at a restaurant downtown and — even though they’re working outdoors now, Julio comes down with the coronavirus.” That hypothetical restaurant may have had to close and report to the county that it experienced a positive COVID-19 case when, “in actuality, the case came from a gathering,” Beilenson explained. The restaurant was, as he termed it, the “second-generation” site for that particular infection.
Beilenson also said the county’s contact tracing staff of fewer than 60 people is “now beyond capacity” and simply does not have the resources available to investigate the origins for every new case that pours in. The Sacramento Bee reported last week that Sacramento County has had to triage its contact tracing investigations, setting vulnerable populations such as those in nursing homes among the highest priorities.
The county now estimates on its dashboard that there are about 3,400 active coronavirus cases, with 3,829 others classified as “likely recovered.” In early June, fewer than 250 cases were considered active, according to the county’s estimates.
Beilenson said Monday that the county is aiming to more than double its staff, up to about 110 tracers, in the next two to four weeks.
The county’s totals for current hospitalization and patients in intensive care units also shot to new all-time highs Monday.
There were 204 people with confirmed COVID-19 cases in Sacramento County with 70 of them in intensive care, according to data updated by the state health department Monday morning. Both figures are record highs that have climbed quickly since June 18, when the county had just 34 patients in hospitals and 13 in the ICU, after having stayed stable from mid-April up to that point. Sacramento County has 75 ICU beds still available, according to the state dashboard.
Beilenson called that patient load high but still “relatively manageable,” adding that ICU capacity remains “significant” even though it’s below the state’s threshold of 20 percent, and that surge beds have not yet been needed.
“Those are things we check every single day,” he said of hospitalization totals and capacities.
He points out that while 200-plus hospitalized is a much higher total than the eight reported in late May, that latter figure was “a tiny, tiny number.”
Since the July 4 holiday, the county’s case total for the entire pandemic has risen from 4,004 to 7,326, a huge increase of about 83% in 16 days.
The share of cases countywide involving people ages 18 to 49 has grown to more than 61%, and 22% of all diagnosed COVID-19 cases in Sacramento County have been people in their 20s, as the average age of the infected population continues to trend downward.
The state health department’s watch list also lists social gatherings, not business openings, as a key driver in growing COVID-19 activity in Sacramento County. But the monitoring list notes for nearby Placer and Yolo counties that transmission is being traced to indoor workplaces.
The region’s intense increase in COVID-19 activity over the past month hasn’t been limited to Sacramento County. The six-county area, of Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer, Yolo, Sutter and Yuba, has combined for more than 11,000 positive cases and nearly 150 fatalities.
Five of the six counties — all but El Dorado — are among the 33 listed on the state watch list due to increasing disease transmission, increased hospitalization or limited hospital capacity.
All counties currently on that list are subject to additional indoor business closures including gyms, places of worship, office spaces, barbershops, nail salons and shopping malls. Bars, indoor restaurant dining, movie theaters, card rooms and other family entertainment venues have been ordered closed statewide since July 13, as Newsom announced.
Placer County blew past its previous daily record of 49 new cases with 83 in Sunday’s update, then added 40 more Monday to surpass 1,400 cases. Eleven Placer County residents have died over the course of the pandemic.
Placer reported 56 COVID-19-positive patients in its hospital beds as of Monday, of which 51 were admitted due to the disease rather than going to the hospital for a different reason and then testing positive. The county had 10 coronavirus patients in the ICU as of Monday.
Yolo County reported an additional death Sunday, its 32nd all-time, and 39 new COVID-19 cases for a total of 1,162 to date.
El Dorado, for weeks the state’s most populous county to have avoided a coronavirus death, reported its first COVID-19 fatality over the weekend. The county has grappled with an especially sharp rise in new infections in the Lake Tahoe area, which is where the victim resided.
The county, as of Monday afternoon, has reported a total of 443 cases. On Monday, three people were hospitalized for COVID-19 treatment in El Dorado; one of them was in intensive care.
This story was originally published July 20, 2020 at 11:33 AM.
