Exclusive: Sacramento has the lowest coronavirus infection rate of any large U.S. metro area
In a surprise finding, the Sacramento region has the lowest reported coronavirus infection rate among the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the country, according to a Sacramento Bee analysis.
The Bee review of metros with more than 1 million residents showed the highest per capita rates are in larger and older East Coast and Midwest cities, where people often live closer together, and in many cases where leaders were slower to impose “stay at home” orders. The highest rates are in the New York City and northern New Jersey area, followed by New Orleans and Boston.
At the opposite end of the scale, Sacramento, San Antonio, Tampa, Fla., and Portland, Ore. had the lowest infection rates, in that order. Each of those areas has density in urban cores, but also has a considerable population base in suburban areas where detached, single-family homes are the norm, giving residents more elbow room.
The Bee analysis was based on combining coronavirus infection data from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security as of Friday with U.S. Census population data.
The Sacramento metropolitan area includes the counties of Sacramento, Placer, Yolo and El Dorado, a region of roughly 2.3 million people.
The Bee’s numbers are indicators of how well the nation’s largest metro areas are doing compared to each other – but are not a definitive assessment.
Areas that conduct more testing are likely to have higher per capita infection rates. Data on the number of tests per capita in each of the metro areas nationally is not yet available for analysis. (The Bee plans to conduct that analysis when it obtains local testing numbers.) As well, areas with more older residents may have more infected people tested and counted.
The Sacramento region’s death rate – which may be a more reliable measure of disease prevalence – is also relatively low.
Sixty-six of the Sacramento region’s residents had died as of Friday, for a rate of 2.9 deaths per 100,000 people. Only five other large metro areas had a lower death rate, all of them in Texas, Florida or Utah.
Also, several U.S. metro areas with between 500,000 and 1 million people – regions much less populated than Sacramento – had lower infection rates, including Fresno. A few other California metros in that population group – Modesto, Oxnard and Stockton – had infection rates only a little higher than Sacramento’s.
Sacramento health chief Dr. Peter Beilenson said The Bee review nevertheless corroborates his sense that the Sacramento region has responded well during the pandemic since the first cases occurred in mid-February.
Beilenson said Sacramento County doctors, hospitals, public and private labs are conducting more than 1,000 tests a day. He said that number probably is typical for a metropolitan core county nationally.
Sacramento momentarily was the center of national attention in February when UC Davis Medical Center disclosed it was treating the first patient nationally believed to have contracted the virus through community transmission rather than from travel.
“Potentially a little of the notoriety of the first community-based case may have gotten people’s attention a little more,” prompting residents to respond when officials imposed stay-at-home orders in March, the health chief said.
Sacramento was in the first wave of areas nationally to impose those orders. But a handful of Bay Area counties took that step a few days earlier, and the rest of California was grouped under a similar order by Gov. Gavin Newsom almost simultaneously with Sacramento’s edict.
Moreover, two of the metro area’s counties, El Dorado and Placer, have not pushed the stay-at-home message as strongly – yet both have low infection rates.
One portion of El Dorado County, though, the south Lake Tahoe area, has essentially banned non-residents from coming in. And Yolo County has issued one of the strongest infection-control orders in the state, telling residents they must wear face masks in public.
Sacramento health chief Beilenson pointed out other data that he says may tell the story better: The county’s hospitals has assembled a combined 600 beds for virus patients, in case there were a major surge. But as of Friday, only 59 COVID-19 patients were being treated in county hospitals. The county’s peak was 105 patients on April 3.