Also serving the communities of De Luz, Rainbow, Camp Pendleton, Pala and Pauma
SAN DIEGO (CNS) - As San Diego County continues to await guidance on
the effects of its removal from the state's coronavirus watchlist, public
health officials reported 212 new COVID-19 cases and five additional deaths
today, raising the region's totals to 35,376 cases and 638 deaths.
The county was officially removed from the state's monitoring list
Tuesday, setting in motion a 14-day countdown that could see K-12 students back
in the classroom as soon as Sept. 1, depending on the decisions of individual
school districts. However, any guidance on what that means for businesses was
still unclear.
County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher said he and other county officials
were expecting to hear about the framework for reopening indoor businesses from
the state by Monday.
``That doesn't mean we'll be able to open everything all at once,'' he
said. ``We must be mindful. We don't want to undo the progress we've made
so far.''
The county continues to make progress, with a case rate of 84.4
positive COVID-19 tests per 100,000 people on Wednesday, below the state's 100
per 100,000 guideline.
The county will be placed back on the list should it be flagged for
exceeding any one of six different metrics for three consecutive days. Those
metrics are the case rate, the percentage of positive tests, the average number
of tests a county is able to perform daily, changes in the number of
hospitalized patients and the percentage of ventilators and intensive care beds
available.
Of the 6,781 tests reported Wednesday, 3% returned positive, lowering
the 14-day rolling average to 4%, well below the state's 8% guideline. The 7-
day rolling average of tests is 7,798 daily.
Of the total positive cases in the county, 2,916 -- or 8.2% -- have
required hospitalization since the pandemic began, and 723 -- or 2% -- were
admitted to an intensive care unit. The current number of COVID-19 patients in
the hospital rose slightly to 303 Wednesday, with 104 of those in the ICU.
County health officials reported two new community outbreaks
Wednesday, dropping the number of outbreaks in the past week to 15.
The new outbreaks were in a restaurant and a business. The county
continues to keep the names and locations of businesses with outbreaks secret.
The number of community outbreaks remains well above the county's goal
of fewer than seven in a seven-day span, although Dr. Wilma Wooten, the
county's public health officer, thanked the public for adhering to health
guidelines to significantly reduce those numbers. A community setting outbreak
is defined as three or more COVID-19 cases in a setting and in people of
different households in the past 14 days.
On Monday, county-compiled data related to race and ethnicity on
testing, staffing and geographic location will be made available for the first
time. Previously, data on race had been broken down by deaths, hospitalizations
and case numbers only.
Latinos are still disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, with that
ethnic group representing 61.7% of all hospitalizations and 46% of all deaths
due to the illness. Latinos make up about 35% of San Diego County's population.
Wooten revealed a five-tiered testing priority protocol Wednesday that
the county has been using. In the top two tiers were symptomatic people
separated by risk factors, followed by two tiers of asymptomatic people and
finally by a general public health surveillance tier. The county reassessed its
testing priorities in mid-July.
San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer announced Tuesday that the city would
begin allowing gyms, fitness businesses and places of worship to operate in
city parks beginning Monday.
``There is no city better than San Diego to take advantage of the fact
that COVID-19 has a harder time spreading outdoors. Using parks as part of
our pandemic relief response will help the mental health and physical health of
thousands of San Diegans,'' Faulconer said.
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