COVID cases are ticking up again in Sacramento County. Here’s what may be to blame
Coronavirus infections are beginning to increase once again in Sacramento County.
Although the omicron variant has been confirmed in nearby Yolo County and small amounts of it have also been detected in Sacramento wastewater, the recent spike in numbers is more likely due to the recent holiday than omicron, Sacramento’s top health official said Thursday.
“We are seeing an uptick in numbers, and from anecdotal information from our community testing sites, we gather that this is due to people traveling or gathering during the Thanksgiving holiday,” Sacramento County health officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye said on a call with reporters Thursday, two weeks after Thanksgiving.
The county’s daily case rate has increased from 9.9 to 13.7 per 100,000 residents since the holiday, the local health office’s data dashboard shows, a 38% increase.
Sacramento’s test positivity rate has increased by a smaller proportion, from 3.2% to 3.4% of samples returning positive, according to California Department of Public Health data.
That suggests some of the recent increase can be attributed to more tests being processed than pre-Thanksgiving, which state and local data also support, but that cases are still beginning to trend upward after declining throughout most of November.
The two-week mark after the holiday is right around when health officials expected a spike in COVID-19 activity might emerge, due to incubation and testing timelines.
“We tried to get messages out, in hoping people would take precautionary measures,” such as getting vaccinated, limiting holiday travel and indoor masking, Kasirye said. “It’s hard to gauge just how much of an increase was expected. We did expect that there would be some.
“We feel that, because this time around we do have vaccinations available, that (the increase) is not going to be as high as last year.”
California’s statewide case rate has increased from about nine to 12 per 100,000 since Thanksgiving, and hospitalizations with the virus rose from about 3,050 to 3,400 patients, an 11% increase, in the past two weeks.
The patient total in Sacramento County recently increased more than 20%, from 127 to 155 between Nov. 24 and Dec. 2, but has plateaued around 150 over the past week, state data show.
Winter 2020 remains Sacramento and California’s worst stretch of the pandemic in terms of cases, hospitalizations and deaths from the virus. As more major holidays like Christmas and New Year’s approach in a few weeks, and with studies still underway to understand the impact of the new omicron variant, Kasirye and other health officials urged caution.
Kasirye also said, though, that she does “not anticipate changing anything about protocols now,” even in light of omicron.
“I think it’s important to note that the delta variant is still the predominant variant in Sacramento County,” she said. “We still need to remember to use our masks, especially indoors.”
Kasirye said in late September that the county would likely drop its indoor mask mandate — which was re-introduced in July, in response to delta — when the case rate returns to about five daily cases per 100,000 residents. Sacramento has been above that mark since late June, peaking around 46 per 100,000 in August, at the height of the delta surge.
‘Small number’ of school outbreaks following break
Nick Mori, a coordinator with the county health department’s schools team, said Sacramento continues to see “a small number of isolated outbreaks” at some campuses.
“Anecdotally, some of them did report a decent number of cases where folks were reporting testing positive over (Thanksgiving) break, but they did not return to school,” Mori added. “So there was not the same level of contact tracing needed.”
Omicron, wastewater and Sacramento lab capacity
Yolo County and the Healthy Davis Together initiative announced the region’s first confirmed case of omicron late Thursday morning, shortly after Sacramento County’s media call. Officials said the case came in a vaccinated West Sacramento adult who recently traveled domestically.
Earlier this week, a group of researchers at Stanford University confirmed the presence of the omicron variant in wastewater samples from Sacramento.
The finding was not surprising, and research teams said a relatively small concentration was found, roughly “on the order of perhaps 10 to 20 people,” Emory University researcher Marlene Wolfe told The Sacramento Bee.
Omicron has not yet been detected in a clinical lab sample out of Sacramento County, county epidemiology program manager Jamie White said on Thursday’s call.
“They probably exist, we just haven’t gotten one yet,” White said.
Last week, Kasirye announced that Sacramento County’s public health laboratory had gained the capacity to conduct in-house, whole-genome sequencing, used to test for variants.
On this week’s call, she added that the laboratory can only handle about 40 samples per week for variant testing, and that the results take an average of about two to four weeks from sample collection, “so we still have to prioritize which samples we are going to test,” such as by focusing on outbreaks or vaccinated breakthrough cases.
County vaccine coordinator Rachel Allen noted that the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday authorized booster doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine in 16- and 17-year-olds.
Kasirye mentioned early reports suggesting omicron may be linked to mild disease, and Allen noted the FDA authorization came soon after preliminary data “showing boosters may be critical in protecting against the omicron variant.”
But Kasirye said officials also must continue to monitor and research the variant.
“There’s a lot we still are yet to learn about the omicron variant,” Kasirye said Thursday. “I think those are answers we’ll get pretty shortly.”
This story was originally published December 9, 2021 at 12:13 PM.
