Also serving the communities of De Luz, Rainbow, Camp Pendleton, Pala and Pauma
SAN DIEGO (CNS) - San Diego County public health officials reported
303 new COVID-19 infections and four virus-related deaths today, raising the
region's totals to 51,327 cases and 844 deaths.
This comes a day after state data confirmed the county will remain in
the red, or substantial, tier of the state's four-tier COVID-19 reopening plan
for at least another week.
County supervisors Greg Cox and Nathan Fletcher said staying in red
wasn't good enough. Cox said the red tier's restrictions still made it
incredibly difficult for small businesses to stay open.
Fletcher agreed, saying the county needed to drive down positive tests
and new case numbers.
``The overwhelming majority [of county residents] are doing everything
right, but we need to see numbers go down,'' he said. ``We need to get off
this weekly cliff we stare down.''
For several consecutive weeks, the county has remained in the red
tier, but within very close range of that purple tier which would shutter
almost all indoor business.
According to the California Department of Public Health on Tuesday,
San Diego County's state-calculated, adjusted case rate is 6.8 daily infections
per 100,000 residents, up from 6.5 the previous week. The unadjusted case rate
was 7.2, up from 6.9 last Tuesday. The adjusted rate is due to San Diego
County's high volume of tests.
The testing positivity percentage is 3%, below last week's 3.5%, and
is in the third -- or orange -- tier.
To remain in the second tier of the four-tier COVID-19 reopening plan,
the county must continue to have an adjusted case rate of less than 7.0 per
100,000 residents and a testing positivity percentage of less than 5%.
The county is preparing additional health and safety guidelines as
school year moves forward, county Public Health Officer Dr. Wilma Wooten said
Wednesday. A survey of the San Diego County Office of Education found that of
the 42 school districts, 27 are reopen to at least some students for in-person
learning, six will open later this month, three have a target date of January
2021, one is looking for a start date in October or November and two are still
determining a start date.
Of the 9,662 tests reported Wednesday, 3% returned positive, bringing
the 14-day rolling average percentage of positive cases at 3%. The seven-day
daily average of tests was 10,472.
Of the total number of cases in the county, 3,710 -- or 7.3% -- have
required hospitalization and 858 -- or 1.7% of all cases -- had to be admitted
to an intensive care unit.
Four new community outbreaks were reported Tuesday -- two in business
settings, one in a restaurant/bar setting and one in a restaurant.
In the past seven days, 47 community outbreaks were confirmed, well
above the trigger of seven or more in a week's time. A community setting
outbreak is defined as three or more COVID-19 cases in a setting and in people
of different households over the past 14 days. The county uses outbreak to get
a larger sense of the pandemic locally, but the state does not include the
statistic in its weekly report.
Students living in three residence halls at Point Loma Nazarene
University were ordered to shelter in place on Tuesday after ``an increase of
12 cases on the Point Loma campus,'' according to university officials.
The latest cases brings the university's case total to 16, according
to the university's COVID dashboard. No employees have tested positive for the
illness.
In a news release Tuesday, campus officials said they identified three
positive cases in Klassen Hall (3rd North), four positive cases in
Hendricks Hall (1st South), three positive cases in Young Hall (4th Floor) and
two unrelated cases in Nease Hall.
Campus officials also said that 50 students had been identified as
``close contacts,'' meaning they were within 6 feet of an infected person for
at least 15 minutes, either with or without a face covering.
Another metric the state released Tuesday is the health equity metric,
which finds the positivity rate of the county's least healthy quartile. San
Diego County's health equity is 5.7%, slightly less than double the county's
positive testing average.
The metric will be used to determine how quickly a county may advance
through the reopening plan.
Counties with a large disparity between the least and most sick
members of a community will not be punished for the disparity by sliding back
into more restrictive tiers, but such a disparity will stop counties from
advancing to less-restrictive tiers.
To advance to the orange tier, the county would need to report a
metric of less than 5.3%.
According to the state guidelines, the health equity metric will
measure socially determined health circumstances, such as a community's
transportation, housing, access to health care and testing, access to healthy
food and parks.
Neighborhoods are grouped and scored by census tracts on the Healthy
Places Index, healthyplacesindex.org.
The California Department of Public Health will update the county's
data next Tuesday.
Reader Comments(0)