‘We are concerned.’ Sacramento COVID hospitalizations near record high due to delta
Sacramento’s current surge of COVID-19 hospitalizations might soon surpass the worst of last winter’s surge due to the highly contagious delta variant, the county’s top health official said Thursday.
Hospitals in the capital region are growing increasingly crowded with COVID-19 patients, approaching or surpassing records set in late 2020 or early 2021 — even as more than half of residents in the four-county region are now fully vaccinated. A vast majority of COVID-19 hospital admissions aren’t fully vaccinated.
Sacramento County hospitals as of Wednesday were treating 428 patients with confirmed coronavirus cases, according to county health officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye, including 100 in intensive care units.
“We are concerned,” Kasirye said on a Thursday call with reporters.
The county set its all-time record of 518 hospitalized virus cases just before Christmas, and its high mark for ICU patients during winter was 130, data from the state health department show.
“We have surpassed the numbers from the summer surge in 2020 and we are on pace to reach or even exceed the numbers from December.”
Nearby Placer County had 207 hospitalized with the virus, its highest tally of 2021 and on the brink of its peak of 216 from late 2020, according to the latest California Department of Public Health data. Forty were in ICUs, exceeding the county’s winter record by eight patients.
Both counties’ hospital figures have been surging for about six weeks, fueled by rapid case growth from the highly contagious delta variant, which now makes up virtually all new COVID-19 cases in the U.S.
But compared to the winter surge, hospitalizations are spiking more quickly relative to local case rates.
Sacramento and Placer each recently report their daily infection numbers rates at about half of their highs from winter, yet hospitalizations are close to 85% and 95% of the way, respectively, to their highs from the same time frame. Test positivity percentages are also lower, meaning it’s not just a matter of less testing compared to winter.
“I don’t have a clear explanation as to why that’s happening,” Kasirye said. “Definitely we know that it’s due to delta,” but the specifics are less clear.
Kasirye said local hospitals requested staffing help from the state in the winter and a few have started to do so during the current surge.
“We definitely continue to monitor and have check-ins with (the hospitals) on a weekly basis,” the health officer said.
Kasirye reiterated calls for people to reserve emergency resources — 911 calls, ambulances and emergency room visits — for true medical emergencies. Hospitals’ emergency departments have recently been bogged down by people, many of them asymptomatic residents seeking COVID-19 testing, as The Sacramento Bee first reported early last week.
Hospitals in the two counties aren’t yet running out of capacity to handle patients nor have they had to triage care, still urging patients to seek medical care as needed for COVID- and non-COVID purposes.
Other, smaller counties in the capital region are also seeing steep hospitalization surges.
El Dorado County, which had no confirmed virus patients in its two hospitals the first day of summer, had 30 hospitalized including 10 in ICUs as of Thursday’s state data update.
Yolo County, which also had zero a little less than two months ago, surged earlier this week to 17, including seven in intensive care with no additional ICU beds available.
Adventist-Rideout Hospital in Marysville, which serves the rural Yuba-Sutter bicounty region where full vaccination rates are well below the state average, spiked from 16 COVID-19 patients to 55 in the past month. The hospital had 19 virus cases in intensive care, one shy of its record from January, and four staffed ICU beds available, according to CDPH.
When might the delta surge peak?
Kasirye said some recent, state-level projections forecast that it may be another month of two before the delta surge subsides.
In the meantime, new cases of COVID-19 are coming fast and from many directions.
“With this level of spread ... it’s everywhere,” Kasirye said on Thursday’s call. “We’re getting outbreaks from workplaces, we’re getting some outbreaks from schools. But we don’t have any very large outbreaks at this point.”
Many K-12 campuses resumed in-person learning this month or are planning to in early September. Worry is highest for elementary schools, since children younger than 12 are not yet eligible for the vaccine.
Sacramento health officials have already noted higher concentrations of cases in younger people and a lower median age of hospitalizations during the delta surge, including a minimum of five juveniles treated in Sacramento County hospitals during July.
Kasirye said outbreaks in long-term care facilities, such as nursing homes, have been relatively infrequent and have remained small, which she credited to high vaccination rates among residents.
Mayor wants indoor vaccine mandate. What about the county?
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg earlier this week signaled that he wants the city to explore the possibility of instituting a vaccine or vaccine-or-negative-test mandate for indoor activities such as bars, restaurants, gyms, concert venues and other businesses.
Kasirye said the city has been in conversations with county health officials on the logistics of such a mandate.
But she also said the health office is not considering a similar mandate at the county level at this time, largely because of the level of resources involved and the challenges of enforcing such a policy.
Vast majority of COVID hospitalizations not vaccinated
By far, most of those being hospitalized with COVID-19 are not fully vaccinated, local and state health officials say.
Placer’s local health office in a Tuesday update broke down its hospital numbers in greater detail.
The county health office said that of 190 hospitalized with COVID-19 on Tuesday, 181 were hospitalized due to the disease, meaning less than 5% were admitted for other reasons but happened to test positive upon screening. Of the 35 listed in ICUs, 34 were admitted specifically for COVID-19.
Information on vaccination status is only being reported by two of Placer County’s three hospitals. At those facilities, 85 of 94 (90%) of COVID-positive patients Tuesday were not fully vaccinated.
Sacramento County has not provided a similar breakdown in its regular, daily updates, but Kasirye said earlier this month that among 98 hospitalized cases from July with vaccination status known, 89 (91%) were not fully vaccinated. The county reported last week that of nearly 780,000 residents fully vaccinated to date, only 673 had contracted a symptomatic case of COVID-19.
All counties in the four-county region have a little more than half their total populations fully vaccinated but are below the 56% statewide rate: 51% of Sacramento and El Dorado, 53% of Placer and 54% of Yolo residents are at least two weeks beyond their final dose.
CDPH in a Wednesday update said that for the week of Aug. 9 to Aug. 15, the infection rate among unvaccinated Californians was nearly seven times higher than among the fully vaccinated: 51 per 100,000 residents compared to 7.6 per 100,000, reflecting the strong efficacy of the vaccines.
This story was originally published August 19, 2021 at 12:20 PM.
