500 Sacramento County residents have died of COVID-19 in the past eight months
Sacramento County has reached 500 confirmed coronavirus deaths, arriving exactly at that total in Thursday’s daily update from local health officials.
It’s a milestone that would have been hard to fathom back in the spring, when the pandemic was first taking root. The virus began impacting Sacramento County nearly eight months ago. The first 100 deaths were stretched over nearly five months. It took a little more than three months to add 400 more deaths.
The county recorded its first resident death from COVID-19 in early March and hit a reported total of 43 dead by the end of April. As infection and hospitalization rates started to plummet in the week’s following the start of the statewide stay-at-home order, May and June brought just 35 combined fatalities.
The county’s death toll didn’t reach triple digits until July 24.
Then, the summer surge hit Sacramento County, home to more than 1.5 million people, as it did most of California.
New cases soared. The county’s total for hospitalized patients with confirmed COVID-19 cases, down to single digits at one point in late May, exploded to over 280 by late July. The number in intensive care units went from two to 91.
Deaths followed in close correlation: at least 87 Sacramento County residents died of COVID-19 in July, 179 in August and 116 in September, according to the county health office. At least another 36 have died from Oct. 1 through Oct. 19, an improved pace as the rate of new cases decreased steadily from late August through early October. Hospital rates have also fallen, with the county currently at 83 hospitalized and 14 in ICUs, according to state data from Thursday.
The deaths have not been spread out uniformly. They’ve been largely — but not exclusively — concentrated within Sacramento’s oldest populations. More than 380 of the deaths, or nearly 77% of them, have come in residents age 65 or older. That includes 234 who were age 80 or older, nearly half the overall death toll.
Five who have died were in their 20s or younger, seven were in their 30s, 15 were in their 40s and 53 were in their 50s.
The county says more than 40% of the deaths, 206 of them as of last Friday, have come from congregate care homes. The classification includes skilled nursing, assisted living and other long-term care facilities that cater to seniors.
Geographically, more than half of the deaths have come in the capital city, which at roughly 500,000 residents accounts for close to one-third of the county’s population. County health officials report 278 COVID-19 deaths through Thursday among those living within Sacramento city limits.
At least 119 have died in unincorporated parts of the county, a tally that includes two inmates of Folsom State Prison. The rest come mainly from the suburbs: 44 have died in Elk Grove, 25 in Rancho Cordova, 19 in Citrus Heights, eight in Galt and six in Folsom. Only tiny Isleton along the Delta has been spared from fatality. One victim’s place of residence was unknown.
Sacramento County’s infection total surpassed 26,000 in Thursday’s data update, which added 136 new lab-confirmed cases. That works out to around one in every 58 residents having tested positive since the beginning of the health crisis. For the city of Sacramento, the infection total is just a few dozen shy of 15,000. That would be about one in every 33.
Confirmed cases across the county have been distributed more in line with the population’s age breakdown: 60% of infections have come in people ages 18 through 49, 19% in those 50 to 64, 13% in those 65 or older, and the remaining 8% in juveniles.
Recently, in the capital-area counties of Sacramento, Placer and Yolo, a recent uptick in new infections has taken hold since about mid-October, following weeks of decline or plateau. It is a short-term increase so far, and too early to tell whether it’ll result in a similar spike in hospitalizations or deaths.
But the region, state and nation as a whole are about to face Halloween, Election Day, cooler weather, Thanksgiving and winter holidays, all of which will present a significant challenge as health officials urge people to continue avoiding group gatherings, which are key sources of COVID-19 spread.
