Coronavirus updates: California shares county-by-county COVID data for Christmas week
Coronavirus spread remains rampant in California, where tight business and activity restrictions remain in place broadly for a surge that has now lasted more than two months.
Statewide, nearly 22,000 confirmed COVID-19 patients were in hospital beds, including 4,636 in intensive care units, as of a Wednesday update from the California Department of Public Health.
The crisis remains the worst in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley, where the state has reported 0% hospital intensive care unit availability for more than two weeks.
Some health systems in those regions are already entrenched in what state health chief Dr. Mark Ghaly referred to last week as “crisis care” mode.
Los Angeles County emergency leaders earlier this week directed paramedics not to transport patients to hospitals if they have a low likelihood of surviving, a remarkable move to ration care. Los Angeles media have reported in the past week that ambulances have had to wait as long as eight hours in emergency bays before the patients inside them could be taken into jam-packed emergency rooms.
The other three areas laid out in the regional stay-at-home order — Greater Sacramento, the Bay Area and Northern California — still have ICU capacity at varying levels above 0% as of this week.
CDPH reported Tuesday that the Bay Area has aggregate ICU availability of about 6%, one of its lowest figures since the state began keeping track.
Greater Sacramento for the past two days has had about 12% availability. That percentage has rebounded after it dipped as low as 7% around New Year’s Day.
And “Northern California,” the 11-county region north of Greater Sacramento, continues to maintain about 30%. The region of fewer than 700,000 people remains the only one of the five not to have been subject to the regional stay-at-home order, which triggers when regional ICU availability falls below 15%.
The main restrictions of the stay-at-home order, added on top of the purple-tier requirements in place for the vast majority of the state, are closures for outdoor restaurant dining and personal care services like salons.
CDPH data show what appears to be a plateau in new cases at more than 37,000 a day since late December, but these numbers are still likely being significantly impacted by reporting, processing and testing delays related to the recent Christmas and New Year holidays.
California’s two-week test positivity rate, which should be less impacted by holiday reporting delays, has increased much more slowly in the past two weeks than it did during most of November and December. But it still crept up to 12.7% in Tuesday’s update, a new record high, where it held on Wednesday.
To date across California, nearly 2.5 million have tested positive for COVID-19, more than 27,000 of whom have died. The state on Wednesday reported 459 new deaths, the second-highest daily total of the pandemic. Of those, 221 were reported in Los Angeles County, where public health officials did not report any associated backlog.
Statewide deaths have poured in at an average of nearly 300 per day over the past two weeks, already more than double the worst period from summer.
California releases county data for week of Christmas
CDPH on Tuesday provided its weekly update to the tier list, which classifies all 58 of the state’s counties based on their COVID-19 risk levels.
No counties changed tiers from the previous week’s update, when the state lifted coastal Humboldt County out of the strictest purple stage and into the red.
The state also on Tuesday released county-by-county data for the week of Dec. 20 to Dec. 26, which shows rates for test positivity and new cases per 100,000 residents.
While there are still many foreboding numbers within that data set, there were also some modest signs of potential progress in the Sacramento region.
It remains important to note that health experts expect the impact of Christmas to start showing up in the data right about now. So, due to built-in lag times, data that reflect the aftermath of the major holiday likely remains one or two tier-data updates away.
That said, CDPH recorded statewide test positivity at 15% for the week of Christmas — its highest rate ever.
But 10 of the 13 Greater Sacramento counties came in below that, including its three most populous in Sacramento (12.1%), Placer (12.2%) and Yolo (10.1%).
Colusa, Sutter and Yuba counties were the three exceptions, all still above 18% positivity.
Rounding out the 13: Butte at 13%, El Dorado at just over 12%, Amador at 10%, Nevada at 7.7%, Plumas at 6.4% and tiny Alpine and Sierra counties each below 3%.
While a majority of California’s 58 counties had positivity either increase or hold the same compared to the previous week, eight of the 13 Greater Sacramento counties decreased this week.
Yolo saw the biggest decline of all 58 counties, dropping from to 10.1% this week from 13.2% the week before. Yuba’s went down by 2.7%, and Colusa dropped 1.6%.
Sacramento, Nevada and Sutter counties all fell between half a percent and 1%, and Butte and Placer counties declined by less than half a percent.
On the other end, Plumas County’s rate increased by half a percent, while Amador and El Dorado counties’ rates each grew by about 1.5%. Alpine and Sierra’s rates also grew slightly, though those counties are so sparsely populated that fluctuations are typical.
What about schools, and Newsom’s plan?
The other tier list metric, the average for new daily cases per 100,000 residents, took heightened importance last week when Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a major, $2 billion proposal to reopen elementary schools by early spring.
The plan would only allow schools to reopen campuses in counties reporting fewer than 28 new daily cases per 100,000.
That’s four times higher than the threshold for the purple tier, but it’s still a mark most counties haven’t hit recently amid the intense surge.
As of Tuesday’s update, only 14 of 58 were beneath it, including a few of the less populous Greater Sacramento counties.
However, case rates from this week’s update should be looked at with much more caution than test positivity percentages because the Christmas holiday likely resulted in reduced testing, driving new infections by volume to be artificially low.
Even considering potential undercounting linked to the holiday, a bulk of Greater Sacramento — Sacramento, Butte, El Dorado, Placer, Yuba and Yolo counties — ranged from 38 to 50 new cases per 100,000 for the latest survey week.
Because Newsom’s plan calls for early openings to start around February, case rate data for the next few weeks will be most critical in determining when and whether elementary schools in a given area will be able to open their campuses before the end of the academic year.
110,000 cases to date in six-county capital region
The six counties that make up the bulk of Greater Sacramento — Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties — surpassed 100,000 confirmed cumulative COVID-19 cases a little over a week ago, and entered Wednesday fewer than 200 shy of 110,000.
At least 1,286 residents of those six counties have died of the disease, local health offices report.
Sacramento County has reported a total of 69,552 infections since the onset of the pandemic, and at least 917 of those residents have died of COVID-19. County health officials reported 441 new cases and 19 new deaths Tuesday, after reporting 41 new deaths and 3,866 cases — an average of 967 per day — for the four-day window from New Year’s Day through Monday.
By date of death occurrence, December has blown past August as Sacramento County’s deadliest month of the pandemic. County health officials now report a staggering 241 deaths for Dec. 1 through Dec. 29, 60 more than all of August and still growing as deaths are confirmed from throughout the month.
Virus hospitalizations in Sacramento County have fluctuated recently. The total in hospital beds fell from a record 488 on Monday to 465 on Tuesday, then skyrocketed back up to 509 Wednesday.
ICU patients hit an all-time high of 118 on Wednesday, up from 102 on Tuesday. The available ICU bed total sank from 87 to 78.
Placer County health officials have confirmed a total of 14,800 infections and 132 deaths, updated Tuesday with 113 new cases and no deaths. Placer on Monday added 932 cases and seven fatalities for the four-day reporting period including New Year’s Day.
State data show Placer’s hospitalized total at 180 on Wednesday, down from a record 216 one week earlier. ICU patients reached an all-time high 31 on Monday, since recovering to 27. The state reports 20 ICU beds left available in Placer, up one compared to Tuesday.
Yolo County has reported a total of 8,835 cases and 125 deaths, adding 154 new cases and two deaths Tuesday. The county added 281 cases and six deaths Tuesday following no update Monday due to a database issue.
State data from Wednesday showed Yolo with 30 virus patients in hospital beds, a new record, including 10 in intensive care, down two from Tuesday. The state now reports 16 ICU beds available in Yolo County, up two compared to Tuesday.
The county says on its local health dashboard that it has temporarily stopped updating hospital data “because of a shift in data source to provide the most accurate information.” Yolo expects this to be resolved by Wednesday’s update.
El Dorado County has reported 6,216 positive test results and 27 deaths, updated Wednesday with 121 new cases. The county also added 121 cases Tuesday, as well as three deaths. El Dorado officials on Monday added 376 cases and no fatalities for the four-day window including New Year’s Day.
Following just four deaths from March through mid-November, 23 El Dorado residents have died of COVID-19 between Nov. 25 and Christmas, county officials report.
State and local health officials both reported 40 hospitalized virus patients in El Dorado, breaking a record for the third consecutive day. Twelve remained in ICUs, the same as in Tuesday’s update. However, the number of available ICU beds grew from five to six as hospitals work to expand surge capacity.
In Sutter County, at least 6,797 people have contracted the virus and 62 have died. The county added a record-high eight deaths on Tuesday to go along with 65 new cases, following 229 infections and two fatalities added in a Monday update covering the New Year’s holiday weekend.
Sutter on Tuesday reported a record-high 58 residents hospitalized with COVID-19, including 11 in intensive care.
Neighboring Yuba County has reported 4,221 infections and 23 dead, reporting 151 cases and two new fatalities Tuesday.
Yuba said Tuesday it had 27 residents hospitalized with the virus, two below its record of 29 observed on New Year’s Eve, with five currently in ICUs.
Not all patients are necessarily hospitalized in-county, but the only hospital serving the Yuba-Sutter bi-county region — Adventist-Rideout in Marysville — had 71 patients hospitalized and 15 in ICUs as of Wednesday’s update. One ICU bed remained available.
This story was originally published January 6, 2021 at 8:43 AM.
