Merced County coronavirus deaths reach double digits, active cases surpass recoveries
Deaths due to coronavirus hit double digits in Merced County Wednesday, as the 10th fatality was confirmed by County Department of Public Health.
The death occurred during the weekend, but was reported to the county late. The individual was a female over the age of 65 with underlying health conditions.
Also Wednesday, active coronavirus cases surpassed the number of residents who have recovered from the disease locally. With 366 individuals still infected, the tally just outweighs the 365 recovered.
“We’ve had an explosion of cases in the last several days,” County Health Officer Dr. Salvador Sandoval told the Sun-Star. In the last month, cases have quadrupled, he noted.
Wednesday’s addition of 31 new COVID-19 cases raised the county’s numbers to 741 infections since the pandemic began. One week ago, that total was 509.
Merced County saw its largest single day increase in new cases Tuesday with the addition of 49 confirmed infections.
With the new cases also came an increase in the positive case rate, meaning the percentage of people screened who tested positive went from 6% to 6.16%.
Total hospitalizations also climbed from 68 to 72 Wednesday. Sandoval said the number of residents hospitalized at a time shot up from six in early June to 23 today. There was also an increase in young people requiring hospitalization, he said.
Both intensive care unit capacity and availability of ventilators is stretched thin locally, Sandoval said.
Impacts of case increases
Statewide, positive case rates and hospitalizations are on an uptick. A McClatchy data review showed the positive case rate rose in 38 of the state’s 58 counties between June 10 and 22.
State health officials have said counties should keep the positive rate under 8%, or risk being told to close parts of their local economy.
The number of counties with a rate over 8% jumped in the last two weeks from three earlier in the month to seven as of this week — including Merced County, which rose to about 8.46% during the last two week data period.
Also on the list is Imperial, Glenn, Tulare, Stanislaus, Riverside and San Joaquin counties.
In looking at parameters that allow counties to keep sectors of the locally economy open, Sandoval said the state does consider demographics on a two week basis in addition to aggregate numbers since the pandemic began. The positive case rate and hospitalization are both important metrics, raising concerns about Merced County businesses remaining open.
“The county may be at risk if the infection rate continues,” Sandoval said. Although the county hasn’t reached that point yet, if it does, the state would reach out and make recommendations for a second wave of closures.
Closures would likely take place in reverse order of reopenings. This means gyms and nail salons would be the first to go, followed by barbershops and hair salons, Sandoval said, possibly followed by areas where groups congregate, like churches.
Sandoval said the most effective measures residents can take to avoid another round of shuttered businesses — and more unnecessary deaths — is to practice basic preventative measures, like wearing a mask.
“We need to ground ourselves on science,” he said. “I think that’s whats been lost. Unfortunately, things have gotten very political.”
Mixed messaging and misinformation at the national and local level has caused some to question the very validity of there being a global health crisis, he said.
Contact tracing, which seeks to identify the chain of coronavirus transmission after an individual tests positive, is another ongoing issue that’s recently become exacerbated.
“There are not enough contact tracers,” Sandoval said, citing both the mounting quantity of new cases and the scaling back of the county’s coronavirus response as factors.
The county this month began demobilizing its COVID-19 response center in an effort to get back to regular duties diverted due to the pandemic — before a second wave of infections hit. County Public Health staff was mobilized on COVID-19 efforts, like contact tracing, to the extent that other roles were either put on hold or largely reduced in capacity.
As cases rise amid demobilizing, Sandoval said an emphasis is being placed on workplaces where infected individuals are employed doing some of the contact tracing previously done by County Public Health.
Also Wednesday, a new Golden Valley Health Centers testing site opened in Los Banos. Sandoval said the opening went well, and that the site will likely seek to expand its testing capacity.
Despite the state contracted testing site with OptumServe formerly being set to cease operations after June, Sandoval said it will continue to function with no indication that it will expire any time soon.
In California as of Wednesday, there are 190,776 confirmed coronavirus cases and 5,640 deaths.
