COVID updates: California case rate drops from omicron peak; child hospitalizations up
After about a month of exponential growth, California’s COVID-19 transmission numbers have started to descend from the omicron wave’s precipitous peak.
The state’s per-capita case rate is now 265 per 100,000 residents, the California Department of Public Health said in a Wednesday update, declining for a third straight day from an all-time record of 281 per 100,000.
California’s test positivity is also dropping, now 20.9%, down from a high of 23.2% earlier this month.
Although they’ve started to fall, both transmission metrics remain far higher than at any other point in the pandemic before the omicron surge.
The fast-spreading variant has already led to widespread student and teacher absences at K-12 schools returning from winter break; remote transitions for universities and government bodies; outbreaks at nursing homes and prisons; and staff shortages for restaurants, transit agencies and many other businesses and services.
But if California follows the trend health officials have reported in places like South Africa, the United Kingdom and New York — all of which saw omicron overtake delta as the dominant strain earlier than in California — the next few weeks could see a sharp decline in case rates toward pre-omicron levels.
It may also take a few more weeks for hospitalizations to crest. More than 15,000 were hospitalized Tuesday with COVID-19 in California, a 23% increase in the past week, including just over 2,400 in intensive care units, up 26%.
California to date has confirmed more than 6.9 million COVID-19 cases, not counting unreported at-home test results, and 77,345 coronavirus deaths.
Child and adult hospitalizations both rising in Sacramento
Officials at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento said Tuesday that the hospital is treating more COVID-19 patients than at any point in the pandemic, including a sharp rise in pediatric cases.
“There are currently 126 hospitalized patients with active COVID-19 infections at the medical center,” the research hospital wrote in a news release. “On Jan. 1, there were 37. The new number surpasses last winter’s peak of 125 COVID patients.”
The hospital on Tuesday was treating nine children with COVID-19, up from two on Jan. 1. “The number does fluctuate; a week ago there were 13,” UC Davis Health officials wrote.
Dr. Dean Blumberg, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at UC Davis Children’s Hospital, in a statement said the hospital expects pediatric hospitalizations to continue to increase due to COVID-19 infections as well as Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children, or MIS-C, “which may follow acute COVID infection by two to four weeks.”
“Most of the COVID-19 patients have severe symptoms,” UC Davis Health officials wrote, referring to both adult and pediatric patients. “A smaller number have mild symptoms or even asymptomatic cases that were detected through routine screening, but those patients still strain hospital resources as they must be isolated and require a higher level of care to avoid infecting staff and other patients.
“Some with mild cases still need COVID treatment because the virus can complicate other conditions that brought them to the hospital.”
Sacramento County has broken its record for COVID-19 patients in hospital beds four consecutive days, reaching a new all-time high of 588 on Tuesday, CDPH reported Wednesday.
Outbreaks continue at California nursing homes
A state health dashboard for COVID-19 cases at California’s 1,223 licensed skilled nursing homes shows those facilities are now averaging close to 575 combined daily cases among residents, nearly a 40-fold increase from the 15 a day reported one month earlier.
The recent rate remains below the peak of 728 daily cases during the winter 2020 surge, but is nearly 15 times higher than the peak of the delta variant surge, which maxed out at about 40.
The CDPH dashboard only shows outbreak data for facilities with at least 11 active cases among residents, of which there were seven in the six-county Sacramento region as of a Tuesday update, compared to two facilities less than two weeks ago.
In Sacramento County, Windsor Care Center of Sacramento had 27 active resident infections; Midtown Oaks Post-Acute had 18; Windsor El Camino and Briarwood Post Acute each had 15; and Asbury Park Nursing and Rehabilitation had 13. None of those facilities had more than 10 resident infections as of Jan. 9, according to the state data tracker.
In El Dorado County, The Pines at Placerville had 29 active cases among residents as of Tuesday.
In Placer County, Roseville Care Center had 14 active cases. An earlier outbreak at Westview Healthcare Center in Auburn, which reached at least 19 resident cases, has subsided below 11. No recent COVID-19 deaths have been reported at Westview.
Latest Sacramento-area numbers
Sacramento County has recorded 230,089 total lab-confirmed cases and 2,598 deaths from COVID-19 over the course of the pandemic, according to local health officials.
The county reported about 2,150 new cases Wednesday to bring the daily case rate to 190 per 100,000 residents, declining nearly 20% from an all-time high of 233 per 100,000 recorded five days earlier, according to the local health office.
According to CDPH, Sacramento County’s latest test positivity rate is 24.9%.
County hospitals were treating 588 patients with confirmed COVID-19 as of Tuesday, an all-time record and up from 464 one week earlier, according to CDPH. The ICU total has increased to 92 from 82 in the past week.
Placer County has tallied 48,741 cases and 504 virus deaths to date, last updated Friday.
Local health officials last reported the daily case rate at 115 per 100,000 for the week ending Jan. 5.
Placer’s positivity rate is 25.6%, CDPH reported Wednesday.
Placer County hospitals had 212 COVID-positive patients Tuesday, down from 215 one week earlier. The ICU tally increased to 38 from 32.
Yolo County has confirmed 27,283 infections and 266 deaths from COVID-19, last updated Tuesday.
The county’s latest reported case rate is 110 per 100,000, for the week ending Jan. 13.
CDPH reports Yolo County’s positivity rate at 8.5%, second-lowest among all of the state’s 58 counties.
Yolo County hospitals were treating 24 patients with COVID-19 on Tuesday, up from 12 one week earlier. The ICU total increased to six from two.
El Dorado County has reported 22,039 cumulative cases and 178 deaths from COVID-19, last updated Tuesday.
El Dorado’s latest reported case rate, for the week ending Jan. 11, was 145 per 100,000.
The county had a positivity rate of 25.6%, CDPH reported Wednesday.
Hospitals in El Dorado County had 13 COVID-positive patients Tuesday, down from 16 a week earlier. Five patients were in ICUs, up from three.
Sutter County has recorded 18,163 cases and 206 deaths, and Yuba County has recorded 14,108 cases with 91 deaths, according to a Tuesday update from the bi-county health office.
CDPH reported Yuba County at 188 daily cases per 100,000 and Sutter County at 162 per 100,000 as of Wednesday.
Positivity was 34.1% in Yuba and 33.6% in Sutter, ranking fifth- and sixth-highest respectively among California’s 58 counties,.
The lone hospital serving Yuba and Sutter counties, Adventist Health and Rideout in Marysville, as of Tuesday had 51 patients with confirmed COVID-19, up from 40 one week earlier. Eight were in the ICU, up from seven.
This story was originally published January 19, 2022 at 10:28 AM.
