Sacramento still in CDC’s high COVID-19 level, joined by 7 more California counties
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention placed seven more California counties into the high “community level” for COVID-19 danger on Thursday, while seven others assigned last week to that level fell back to the medium tier.
Alameda, Amador, Contra Costa, Lake, San Joaquin, Sutter and Yuba counties moved into the high community level this week, meaning CDC guidance calls for indoor masking in public settings in those areas.
Alameda County re-introduced a local mask mandate late last week, with local health officials citing climbing hospitalization rates.
Sacramento, Placer, Yolo, Mendocino, Napa and Solano counties entered the high level last week and remained there in this week’s update.
El Dorado, Del Norte, Marin, Monterey, San Benito, Santa Clara and Sonoma counties were placed in the high level last week, but reverted to medium this Thursday due to declines in new cases, hospitalizations or both.
Aside from Alameda, no other Bay Area or Sacramento-area counties appeared immediately poised to return to a countywide mask mandate. Officials in Sacramento and Yolo counties said they would not impose mask requirements unless hospitals are at risk of overwhelm or if there is a change to state guidance on masking.
Sacramento City Unified School District automatically returned to a mask mandate this Monday with Sacramento County’s move into the CDC’s high level last week. With Thursday’s update from the CDC, the K-12 district will stay under a mask mandate until it breaks for summer after next week.
Los Angeles County plans to impose a mask mandate if it re-enters the CDC’s high community level, which local health officials predict could happen later this month.
State health data continue to show most California virus metrics on a steady climb, which officials say is due to the spread of more contagious subvariants of the omicron variant. The subvariant known as BA.2.12.1 remains dominant nationwide in California, but new offshoots BA.4 and BA.5, which officials have said may be better at evading immune protection, are making up a growing share of cases.
The California Department of Public Health on Friday reported the state’s daily case rate at 34.6 per 100,000 residents
The case rate fell 3.3% in the past week. However, California’s test positivity rate increased to 8.6%, from 7.4% a week earlier, amid a decline in testing volume statewide.
Positivity rates remain very high in the Sacramento region. CDPH recorded El Dorado County at 14.5% and Sacramento County at 13.9%, ranked fifth-worst and 10th-worst among California’s 58 counties, respectively.
Yuba, Sutter and Placer counties were also well above the state average at 13.4%, 13% and 12.6%, respectively.
CDPH reported 2,687 patients in California hospital beds Thursday with confirmed COVID-19, an 11% increase in the past week. The latest total includes 294 in intensive care units, up 7%.
Both hospital figures are the state’s highest since March, but remain far below the peaks of more than 15,000 hospitalized with 2,600 in intensive care during the worst point of the omicron surge this January.
Fatality rate growing for first time in months
Though it remains at one of the lowest points of the pandemic, California’s death rate for COVID-19 has started to climb once again, trending upward for the first time since the omicron surge.
CDPH as of Friday reported a seven-day average of 14.1 deaths for the most recent week with data available. That’s a 21% increase compared to the 11.7 recorded one week earlier.
Even so, 14.1 daily deaths represents a small fraction of the peaks from previous surges: about 270 during this winter’s omicron surge, 140 during last fall’s delta variant surge and nearly 700 during the winter 2020 surge before vaccines became widely available.
More inmate virus cases at Sacramento jail
At least 33 inmates at the Sacramento County Main Jail downtown recently tested positive for COVID-19, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office said in a weekly update Wednesday, one of the largest active case totals for the jail in several months.
The county’s two jail facilities – the main jail and the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center in Elk Grove – combined for only five active cases in last week’s update.
No active cases were reported at RCCC as of Wednesday, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
The Sacramento County jail system last saw a serious coronavirus outbreak during the omicron surge. In mid-January, with 76 active virus cases at the main jail and 48 at RCCC, the Sheriff’s Office released more than 200 inmates early in order to maintain adequate space for quarantine procedures.
Three inmates have died of COVID-19 while in Sacramento County jail custody since the start of the pandemic, with the most recent fatality reported in February.
How did CDC make this week’s COVID level calculations?
Counties with a weekly total of more than 200 cases per 100,000 residents are placed in at least the medium level of the CDC’s three-level framework.
A county above 200 cases per 100,000 will then be assigned to the high level if its weekly hospital admission rate for COVID-19 is at least 10 per 100,000, or if COVID-19 patients account for more than 10% of staffed inpatient beds.
For counties below 200 cases per 100,000, the cutoff for the high level is 20 weekly virus hospital admissions per 100,000 residents.
Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer and Yolo counties share a health service area, and the CDC reported the hospitalization rate for that area at 15.1 per 100,000 this week, up 25% from last week.
El Dorado returned to the CDC’s medium level because it dipped just below the weekly case rate threshold of 200 per 100,000, reported Thursday at 198. The county processed 14% fewer tests last week than the week before, according to CDPH data.
The Yuba-Sutter bicounty area entered the CDC’s high community level after its virus hospital admission rate nearly tripled in the past week, from 4.1 per 100,000 residents to 11.2.
Nearby Amador County also crossed the hospitalization mark, moving from 9.3 to 10.5 in the past week.
Sacramento-area numbers by county
Sacramento County’s latest case rate is 38.3 per 100,000 residents, state health officials said in Tuesday’s update, a 1% increase from one week earlier.
Hospitals in Sacramento County were treating 191 virus patients Thursday, state data show, up from 167 one week earlier. The intensive care unit total increased to 28 from 21.
Placer County’s latest case rate is 26.8 per 100,000 residents, down 12% from one week earlier.
Hospitals in Placer County were treating 68 virus patients Thursday, down from 83 one week earlier. The ICU total fell to four from 13.
Yolo County’s latest case rate is 34.6 per 100,000 residents, down 1% from one week earlier.
Hospitals in Yolo County were treating four virus patients Thursday, down from five a week earlier. The ICU total increased from zero to one.
El Dorado County’s latest case rate is 23 per 100,000 residents, down 21% from one week earlier.
Hospitals in El Dorado County were treating 12 virus patients Thursday, up from 10 a week earlier. The ICU total increased to three from one.
Sutter County’s latest case rate is 22.7 per 100,000 residents, down 2% from last week, and Yuba County’s is 25 per 100,000, down 12%, state health officials reported Friday.
The only hospital in Yuba County, which serves the Yuba-Sutter bicounty area, was treating 14 virus patients Thursday, up from seven a week earlier. The ICU tally increased to one from zero.
This story was originally published June 10, 2022 at 11:39 AM.
