‘The numbers are going up.’ Sacramento COVID-19 activity spiking amid Delta variant concerns
Health officials are expressing increased concern about COVID-19 and the Delta variant in California’s capital region, as virus infections and hospitalizations show early signs of spiking from low points enjoyed for most of May and June.
“The numbers are going up,” Sacramento County health officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye said during a video call with reporters Thursday morning.
The county’s coronavirus case rate has nearly doubled in the past two weeks, according to a Thursday update from the local health office, increasing from 3.7 daily cases per 100,000 residents during the week ending June 20 to 7.0 per 100,000 for the week ending July 4. Test positivity, a key indicator of spread, has increased from 1.7% to 3.1% in less than two weeks.
Hospitalizations are also swelling.
State data show the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Sacramento County hospital beds jumping from 59 on Tuesday to 91 by Thursday, the county’s highest total since early May. California’s overall virus patient total has also risen, from just under 1,000 to more than 1,300 in the past 10 days.
Kasirye said the spikes in new cases and hospitalizations line up, in terms of the timeline of progression for the disease, with the state dropping or loosening most COVID-19 restrictions three weeks ago on June 15. Relaxed rules included ending the mask mandate for the fully vaccinated in most public settings.
Some increase in cases was to be expected after reopening the state’s economy, Kasirye said.
But the bigger concern, Kasirye said, is the highly transmissible Delta variant, which state health officials recently reported as having overtaken the Alpha variant as California’s dominant strain.
“We do have concerns, especially for areas or communities where the vaccination rate is still low,” the health officer said.
In a Thursday update, the California Department of Public Health said 43% of cases from June that had their samples genome-tested were caused by the Delta variant, compared to 31% for Alpha.
That’s a major surge in prevalence from May, when Delta comprised just under 6% of sequenced cases and Alpha still represented nearly 60%. Statewide test positivity, meanwhile, has tripled in recent weeks from an all-time low of 0.7% back up to 2.1%.
Vaccinations lag in Sacramento County
While it is a relatively new variant still undergoing study, health experts have widely said that full vaccination appears to provide substantial protection against Delta, making it chiefly a concern for the unvaccinated.
Only about 47% of Sacramento County’s nearly 1.6 million residents are fully vaccinated, compared to 52% across all of California, CDPH data updated Thursday show. Only 53% of county residents have had at least one vaccine dose, trailing the statewide rate of 60%.
That leaves hundreds of thousands of county residents yet to be vaccinated, including everyone younger than 12, as clinical trials are still underway for children below that age.
And, as Kasirye alluded to, there are disparities across different areas within the county. Generally, wealthier ZIP codes have had higher vaccination rates than those that are less affluent throughout the vaccine rollout.
“The vaccine is the best protection that we have,” Kasirye said.
Delta variant in Sacramento
Jamie White, the county’s epidemiology program manager, said during Thursday’s call that Sacramento County to date has been notified of 75 cases caused by the Delta variant.
The full picture on Delta spread in Sacramento County remains largely unclear, Kasirye and White said, because there are still significant limitations on genotype sequencing — the lab testing required to identify and confirm variants of concern.
White said the state-run labs that handle genotyping are not sequencing random samples of cases. Due to limited lab resources, she said, they prioritize genome testing for cases in fully vaccinated people, cases linked to outbreaks and hospitalized cases.
“With that in mind, we have to interpret with caution any trends in terms of demographics,” White said.
White also added that genotype testing is done for surveillance, not diagnostic purposes — that is, labs are testing for variants to gain broad information on their spread on the state, not to give patients or doctors information about individual cases.
Kasirye said she did not have an exact percentage for how many Sacramento County cases have been genome-tested for variants, but that the statewide rate is roughly 10% to 15%. CDPH on its website says it has sequenced 12% of cases from May but only 5% so far for June.
White said it remains too early to tell whether Sacramento’s recent hospitalization spike was so steep due to hospital admissions or data reporting being delayed by the July 4 holiday weekend, and that it may take a couple of more weeks to get a clear picture of the trend.
While on the rise, infection and hospitalization numbers remain well below the worst peaks of the pandemic. In early January, more than 500 were concurrently hospitalized, and the health office recorded the daily case rate at nearly 60 per 100,000.
Because of widely available vaccines, health experts don’t expect a repeat of major surges like the one from winter, but officials across the U.S. have warned that the Delta variant could cause more localized outbreaks in states or smaller geographic areas with low vaccination rates.
Variant concern isn’t limited to Sacramento County. El Dorado County last week confirmed its first Delta variant case, and CDPH data show its test positivity rate creeping from about 1% in early June to 3% by the start of July.
This story was originally published July 8, 2021 at 2:27 PM.
