City of Sacramento records 100th confirmed coronavirus death, county says
One hundred residents of the city of Sacramento have now died of the coronavirus, a grim milestone that comes as pandemic deaths continue to accumulate across California amid a surge in COVID-19 activity that’s continued since June.
The number ticked over to triple digits on the Sacramento County public health department data dashboard, which was updated Thursday morning to bring the countywide total to 155 confirmed COVID-19 deaths all-time. The highly contagious respiratory disease began impacting the region in early March.
California’s capital city has a population of roughly 500,000, meaning at least about one in every 5,000 residents has died of the novel coronavirus in the past five months.
Of the 55 deaths outside Sacramento city limits, 22 have come in unincorporated parts of the county. The suburban cities of Citrus Heights (10 deaths), Elk Grove (9), Rancho Cordova (7) and Folsom (3) account for 29 combined. The remaining four deaths have been residents of the agricultural city of Galt. Isleton, a tiny community along the Delta with fewer than 1,000 residents, is the county’s only incorporated city with no reported COVID-19 deaths.
Sacramento, numerous other counties and the California Department of Public Health as a whole have reported this week that they’re mired in a widespread, major technical problem with CalREDIE, which is the electronic system used to report data on infectious disease. The exact nature and extent of the issue remains unclear, but county officials throughout the Sacramento area, Central Valley and Southern California have said it’s resulted in significant undercounting of daily new case totals since at least last Friday, possibly earlier.
Hospitalization figures and deaths, which use different reporting systems, do not appear to be impacted.
Sacramento County in its Wednesday morning numbers update disclosed 300 new lab-positive COVID-19 cases, for an ostensible total of 10,544 over the course of the pandemic. However, the county dashboard remains topped with a large disclaimer notifying about the statewide data problem and says recent data “are likely to be an underestimate of true cases” countywide.
Thursday’s case load is closer in scale to the daily figures that had been typical for Sacramento County throughout July. This past Sunday through Wednesday, the county dashboard showed only between about 50 and 70 new cases each day. It’s unclear at this point how many, if any, of Thursday’s 300 cases may be backlogged from the technical error.
The state indicated earlier this week it would instruct labs to send data directly to counties via electronic spreadsheets until the CalREDIE issue is resolved.
