County’s daily COVID-19 cases remain high

Yolo County continues to see high numbers of new COVID-19 cases. The county has reported more than 600 new cases as of Sept. 3, along with two more deaths. In the last month, 2,205 county residents have tested positive for COVID-19 and 18 people have died. During the entire pandemic,17,327 county residents have tested positive and 231 have died. The latest deaths came in West Sacramento — two men, one between the ages of 45 and 54, the other between the ages of 55 and 64, according to the county’s online COVID-19 dashboard. Vaccination status was not provided. West Sacramento continues to be heavily impacted by the Delta surge. Of the 335 new cases reported by the county just since Tuesday, 161 were West Sacramento residents, including 31 children. Unincorporated areas of the county have also seen a spike in cases among children, a total of 26 since Tuesday. Since the pandemic began, 386 children living in unincorporated areas of the county have tested positive for COVID-19, more than any other age group in those areas. During last Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Supervisor Angel Barajas, who represents the rural 5th District, said he is hearing of a spike in cases among students in Esparto and Supervisor Don Saylor said the same about Winters. West Sacramento, Winters and Esparto have some of the lowest vaccination rates in the county. County Status Yolo County’s daily new case rate of more than 40 per 100,000 residents puts the county in the most severe “high transmission” category of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s community transmission chart. Likewise, if California still had its color-coded, tier-based system, the county would be in the most restrictive purple category where most activities would be shut down. The good news, according to Yolo County Health Officer Dr. Aimee Sisson, is that the county’s test positivity rate is no longer rising and this Delta-fueled surge may have peaked. Hospitalizations may also be leveling off, Sisson told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, though they remain significantly higher than at the beginning of the summer. On June 15 — when the state reopened and dropped its mask mandate — there was one COVID-19 patient in Yolo County’s two hospitals. On Thursday, there were 19, including nine in intensive care. Numbers remain well below the height of the winter surge, however, when the county’s hospitals had more than 35 COVID-19 patients. Sisson said last Tuesday that about 94 percent of the county’s hospitalizations involved unvaccinated individuals. Vaccinations Vaccinated Californians continue to see significant protection against the virus that causes COVID-19. The state Department of Public Health reported this week that among vaccinated individuals ages 16 and over, the COVID-19 case rate is 10.77 per 100,000 residents per day. For the unvaccinated, the case rate among those 16 and up is 61.55 per 100,000 residents per day. Both case rates have steadily increased since July. For the week of July 7-14, the case rate among vaccinated residents was 2 per 100,000 and for unvaccinated 13 per 100,000.