Sacramento County reaches new COVID-19 milestone: More than 1,000 residents have died
More than 1,000 Sacramento County residents have died of the coronavirus in the past 10 months, local health officials confirmed Monday, with the total significantly boosted by a record-smashing December.
The county on Monday confirmed 38 newly reported COVID-19 deaths mostly from late December and early January, pushing the cumulative tally to 1,015 for the duration of the health crisis.
The first virus death in a Sacramento County resident came in early March. It took nearly eight more months, through late October, to reach the 500-death milestone. The next 500 deaths occurred in less than three months.
The county health office has confirmed 319 virus deaths for December, a death toll that has already far surpassed August’s 181 to become its deadliest month of the pandemic. Officials have also already confirmed 18 deaths in just the first week of 2021. Both totals will continue to grow because confirming cause of death can take multiple weeks in some cases.
The sharply climbing death rate has been buoyed by explosions of infections and hospitalizations. New cases have ranged between 400 and 1,000 each day since mid-November; and the concurrent total for confirmed COVID-19 cases in hospitals countywide erupted from 85 on Nov. 1, to 363 by Dec. 1, to 469 by Jan. 1, state data show.
There’s reason to believe January’s death toll will be even worse in Sacramento County, which as of a Monday morning update from the California Department of Public Health had 485 patients in hospital beds, including a record-tying 115 in intensive care units. The county entered December with 77 in ICUs.
At least 500 of the 1,015 deaths have come in city of Sacramento residents, though that total has not been updated since Jan. 4, when the county’s death toll was slightly under 900. As of that point, about 200 deaths came from unincorporated parts of the county and the other 200 spread across the capital’s suburbs.
The county reports that nearly half of the 1,015 deaths, 487 of them, have come in residents in their 80s or older, with another 228 (22%) in their 70s, reinforcing that the virus is, in general, much deadlier among older populations than younger ones.
Similarly, local health officials as of last Friday had linked at least 461 deaths COVID-19 deaths to congregate care facilities, including skilled nursing and assisted living homes, which cater to the elderly.
Another 175 who died were in their 60s (17%), 78 in their 50s (7.7%), 27 in their 40s (2.7%) and 14 in their 30s (1.4%). Just six who’ve died were younger than 30, less than 1%of the death toll.
To date, at least 74,101 county residents have tested positive for the virus. For the county of 1.56 million, that’s close to one in every 20 people.
This story was originally published January 11, 2021 at 11:34 AM.
