Coronavirus updates: California poll worker in Central Valley city tests positive
Election Day has arrived in the United States, coinciding this year with an intensifying pandemic to create a Tuesday like no other.
Mail-in ballots have already been cast at record-setting rates in many states and localities, California and Sacramento County among them, signaling efforts to avoid crowds and lines with the highly contagious coronavirus still spreading uncontrolled in many areas.
Still, millions more Californians are expected to cast their votes in person by the time polls close at 8 p.m. Counties have implemented social distancing accommodations at vote centers and the state’s mask mandate remains in effect, both continued measures designed to curb the spread of COVID-19.
A poll worker at a voting center in Escalon tested positive for the virus Tuesday morning — receiving the result before the site opened on Election Day, but after scores of voters had already gone to the site from Saturday through Monday for in-person services, San Joaquin County announced in a midday news release.
County voting registrar Melinda Dubroff said in a written statement she was notified at 6:15 a.m. of a positive COVID-19 case in an election worker working at the Escalon Community Center 45 minutes before its 7 a.m. opening time Tuesday.
The test forced 16 additional poll workers into quarantine, prompted a “deep cleaning” of the site, and led to a new set of election workers being brought in Tuesday morning, Dubroff wrote. The voting center opened for ballot drop-offs on time at 7 a.m. but didn’t open for in-person voting until 8:30 a.m., 90 minutes late, she said.
About 200 voters went to the Escalon voter service center, indoors, while it was open for in-person services 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Another 50 used the location’s ballot drop box those three days.
“Contact tracing will begin immediately in coordination with the Department of Public Health,” Dubroff wrote.
The coronavirus has been an inextricable factor in this year’s election, from the Escalon incident to voting procedures, also remaining the headlining topic in the presidential campaign itself.
The respiratory disease known as COVID-19 has infected at least 934,000 Californians and killed nearly 17,700, according to California Department of Public Health data updated Tuesday.
California started November with lower recent infection rates than numerous states. But the state is still in a critical moment with key metrics on the rise since the second half of October and plenty of logistical challenges ahead before the end of 2020. Tuesday’s presidential election will also delay this week’s update to the state’s reopening tier list by one day, the California Department of Public Health confirmed to The Bee in an emailed statement Monday.
The weekly COVID-19 tier assignments from CDPH, which place counties into one of four risk classifications based on recent infection and test positivity rates, will come Wednesday instead of Tuesday so as not to overlap with Election Day.
The state factors in a one-week lag time in tier updates to account for potential data issues, meaning this week’s tier update, which assessed numbers from Oct. 18 through Oct. 24, could reflect the shift from plateau to increase that has been observed in some parts of the state since the middle of last month, including Sacramento, Placer and Yolo counties.
Tier updates determine how strict restrictions on businesses, gatherings and other activities must be in each of California’s 58 counties based on their recent coronavirus infection and test positivity rates. The four tiers are purple, red, orange and yellow.
Nine counties, including Los Angeles, entered this week in the most-restrictive purple tier, meaning things like restaurants, shopping malls and places of worship must stay closed for indoor operations. Ten counties, mostly sparsely populated ones in the foothills and northern reaches of the state but with the notable exception of San Francisco, are in the loosest tier, yellow.
The remaining 39 counties making up the majority of the state’s population are in red or orange, meaning many businesses and activities can reopen with restrictions in place including capacity limits that are lower than those in the yellow tier.
In last week’s update from CDPH, the state noted eight counties in the red, orange and yellow tiers — Humboldt, Inyo, Napa, Placer, Plumas, Shasta, Solano and Trinity — had failed to meet all requirements for their current risk levels for the survey week of Oct. 11 through Oct. 17. That means they face demotion to a worse tier Wednesday if their numbers did not improve the following week.
Seven of the eight with elevated COVID-19 numbers — all but Inyo County — are in Northern California.
Hospital numbers spiking in California
California’s total for hospitalized patients with COVID-19 surpassed 2,600 in Tuesday’s state data update, its highest point since Sept. 22 — the first day of autumn.
The number of those patients in intensive care units rose to 743, a 5% one-day increase from Monday’s 708 and also the state’s highest total since late September.
In line with expectations, hospital rates have started to rise about two weeks after statewide infection totals shifted from plateau to uptick in mid-October.
650 dead in greater Sacramento area
The six-county Sacramento region has combined for 650 reported COVID-19 deaths and more than 39,000 confirmed infections over the course of the pandemic.
Sacramento County has recorded a total of 26,884 lab-positive cases and 504 deaths during the pandemic. Health officials on Tuesday reported 168 new cases after adding 531 for the three-day period of Saturday to Monday, an average of 177 per day.
The county has confirmed 40 deaths from Oct. 1 through Oct. 27, surpassing April’s total of 34 for fourth-most in a month. Continued death confirmations for September have pushed that month’s death toll to 116, according to the local health office. Nearly 180 county residents died in August after 87 died in July.
There are 86 patients hospitalized with coronavirus in Sacramento County as of Tuesday, up one from Monday, according to state data. The number of ICU patients is at 22, an increase of 10 since last Wednesday.
Sacramento County is in the red tier of the state’s reopening guidelines, the second-most restrictive.
Yolo County, which joined Sacramento in the red tier in late September, has reported 3,344 total infections and 61 deaths from COVID-19. The county reported 25 news cases Tuesday after adding one death and 17 cases Monday.
Yolo officials on Monday said seven additional deaths have been reported at Alderson Convalescent Hospital, a skilled nursing facility in Woodland where 57 residents have tested positive since early October during a major outbreak that has killed at least eight. Three more died in an earlier outbreak at Alderson in July, for 11 total deaths at the facility.
Yolo had seven patients in hospitals with COVID-19 as of Tuesday, up from five on Monday, with three still in ICUs.
Placer County has reported 4,527 total infections and 60 deaths, reporting 60 new cases and one new fatality on Tuesday. The county added 114 new cases for the period of Saturday through Monday, a three-day average of 38.
Placer reported on its hospitalization dashboard Tuesday that it had 26 patients in hospital beds with COVID-19, all of them being treated specifically for the disease, including four in ICUs. State data from Tuesday shows 30 hospitalized and five in ICUs in Placer County. Unlike the county, the state does not break down hospitalized cases by cause of admission.
Test positivity rate in Placer is spiking rapidly, according to the county health department dashboard, up to 3.5% for the seven days ending Oct. 25. The rate had been half that at 1.7% for the final week of September, and at 2.4% as recently as Oct. 14.
Placer is in the orange tier.
El Dorado County is one of a small number of counties with a single-digit death toll, with just four fatalities since the start of the pandemic. Health officials have reported a total of 1,444 cases, adding 15 Tuesday.
El Dorado had four patients hospitalized with none in ICUs on Monday, and then two hospitalized with one in an ICU on Tuesday, according to state updates.
Single-digit figures represent a small sample size, but four hospitalizations tied with a handful of August days for the county’s highest total since July 1. For long stretches from mid-August through October, the county had zero or one patient hospitalized with the disease at any given time.
The county remains in the orange tier.
Sutter County health officials have reported a total of 1,951 people positive for coronavirus and 12 dead, with data last updated Tuesday to report 12 new cases after adding 26 from the weekend and Monday. Two people were hospitalized with COVID-19 as of Tuesday, with one in the ICU, according to county health officials.
Yuba County officials have reported 1,398 infections, including 15 Tuesday, and 10 deaths. Yuba has two patients hospitalized with no ICU cases.
Sutter and Yuba, which share a bi-county health office, are both in the red tier.
World numbers: Global infection total inches toward 50 million
The worldwide infection total for COVID-19 has surpassed 47 million, with more than 1.2 million deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
The U.S. leads the world in both counts, as it has for months: Over 232,000 dead and nearly 9.4 million lab-confirmed cases as of Tuesday afternoon.
Anchored by new cases in the United States, Europe, India and South America, the world set another record last Friday, which has a revised total by Johns Hopkins of 570,000 cases.
Following the U.S. by death toll are Brazil at 160,000, India at over 123,000, Mexico at 92,000, the United Kingdom at more than 47,000 and Italy at just over 39,000. More than 37,000 have died of the virus in France, over 36,000 have died in Spain and Iran, and Peru is approaching 35,000 dead. Colombia and Argentina each have reported more than 31,000 dead. Russia recently surpassed 28,000.
India is after the U.S. in terms of total infections, with over 8.2 million reported. Then come Brazil at 5.5 million, Russia at 1.6 million and France at nearly 1.5 million. Spain, Argentina, Colombia and the United Kingdom have all had more than 1 million people test positive. Mexico and Peru have surpassed 900,000.
This story was originally published November 3, 2020 at 9:06 AM.
