Active coronavirus cases back down in Merced County after spike. Will it last?
Merced County this week has seen a steady decline in active coronavirus cases, according to County Public Health reports.
The county began the week with a spike in active cases at 115 Monday, up from 98 Friday. Active cases have since dropped to 92 Thursday. Recoveries rose to 181 Thursday from 147 Monday.
Two additional Merced County residents tested positive for the coronavirus Thursday, bringing the tally to 280 individuals having been infected locally. That’s 12 new cases since Monday, slightly down from 14 new cases during the same period last week.
Daily cases this week have remained within or below County Public Health officials’ reported average of three to six additional infections each day.
The number of persons ever hospitalized has also held steady since Friday at 38.
The news is welcome following the county’s seventh coronavirus-related fatality reported Monday. It also offers reprieve after the biggest single-day leap in new COVID-19 infections was recorded Friday, when 17 new Merced County residents tested positive for the disease.
But will it last?
Merced County businesses reopening
Merced County just over a week ago was approved by the state to reopen more businesses, and Gov. Gavin Newsom this week relaxed state-mandated business closures. Religious services and retail may reopen statewide, while hair salons and barbershops may open in regions like Merced County that have been approved by the state for advanced reopening.
Merced County Public Health officials were not immediately available to comment on how reopenings may affect coronavirus demographics.
But some counties that reopened earliest have recently met troubling results.
Sonoma County, one of the first in California to start reopening, saw a significant rise in cases after loosening constraints on various businesses and destinations. It reported 203 new infections in the past 14 days, doubling its case rate in that time from 20 per 100,000 residents to 41 per 100,000, according to the county’s Health Officer, Dr. Sundari Mase.
Lassen County also pulled back openings when four individuals tested positive for the disease. Up until last week, the county was the last in California to report zero known cases of coronavirus.
A McClatchy data review of the first 22 counties approved to reopen on May 12, 13 or 14 show the number of new cases and deaths in those counties grew faster in the two weeks after businesses were cleared to reopen than they had in the preceding two weeks.
▪ In the two weeks before the reopenings, there were 82 new cases and no new deaths.
▪ In the two weeks after the reopenings, there were 147 new cases and four new deaths.
Measuring by coronavirus hospitalizations
Another potentially worrisome data point: Hospitalizations, considered a more-useful measuring stick than infections, grew by more than 60 percent in those counties. The beginning and ending numbers, though, were small: 13 hospitalizations at the start, 21 hospitalizations two weeks later.
The tiny sample size, and the brief period of time, makes it too early to draw any conclusions, according to two epidemiologists consulted this week by The Sacramento Bee.
Robert Kim-Farley at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and Andrew Noymer of the University of California, Irvine, say a better picture should form after the third and fourth weeks, given that the coronavirus has a sometimes-hidden gestation period of up to two weeks.
For that reason, any deaths would need to be considered as having begun with an infection two or more weeks in the past.
Noymer said Lassen County is erring on the side of caution, but not necessarily overreacting. “The whole point is that we are all in unfamiliar territory.”
More than 6,000 tested in Merced County
The McClatchy review of state health data found mixed signs. The initial 22 reopened counties, for instance, were still in better shape after they reopened than the rest of the state as a whole:
▪ There were only eight new cases per 100,000 residents in those 22 counties from May 11 to May 25, compared to 72 new cases per 100,000 residents elsewhere.
▪ The total number of positive cases in those 22 counties grew by 28 percent in those two weeks, less than the 40-percent growth in cases in other counties in the state. Deaths in the rural counties grew at a lower rate as well.
Merced County was permitted to relax restrictions about a week after these earliest counties were approved. Coronavirus symptoms take two days to two weeks to show, according to the Center for Disease Control.
A total of 6,082 COVID-19 tests have been performed in Merced County through commercial and public health lab systems so far. Of those, 30 are pending, 5,772 are negative and 280 are positive.
Three new self-swab testing sites are set to open at drive-through CVS Pharmacy locations throughout the county Friday.
In California Thursday, there are 102,201 positive coronavirus cases and 3,926 deaths.
The Sacramento Bee contributed to this report.
This story was originally published May 28, 2020 at 5:45 PM.
