Merced County coronavirus deaths hit 110, with 81 deaths confirmed in past month
The deaths of four additional Merced County residents due to the novel coronavirus were confirmed on Tuesday, according to the Merced County Department of Public Health.
The coronavirus death total increased dramatically during the past month in Merced County, as the number of COVID-19 deaths have gone from 29 residents on July 27 to 110 as of Tuesday.
That’s an increase of 279.3%.
“The category unfortunately that we’ve seen the worst outcome in is the number of deaths,” said Dr. Kristynn Sullivan, Merced County’s supervising epidemiologist and operations chief, during Tuesday’s update at the Board of Supervisors meeting by County Public Health.
Of the 110 total deaths among Merced County residents, 62 have been men and 48 women.
“That reflects a national trend,” Sullivan said. “It does seem to be that males are more susceptible to severe outcomes of COVID-19,” Sullivan said.
The virus continues to affect the elderly more with 73 of the 110 deaths coming from the 65 and older age group. However, the 64-and-under age group saw its death total triple from 11 on July 27 to 37 on Aug. 25. That’s an increase of 236%.
According to Sullivan, Merced County has seen its COVID-19 cases double from 3,510 cases confirmed by laboratory testing during the County Public Health’s last update to the Board of Supervisors on July 27 to 7,653 on Aug. 25.
More on latest numbers
One week ago, coronavirus caused deaths tallied 95. All four of the most recently deceased individuals were men, according to County Public Health. Two were between age 60-64 and two were 65-years-old or older.
While one of the deceased male residents is confirmed to have had underlying health conditions prior to his death, County Public Health reported that the health status of the other three is unknown at this time.
In addition to Tuesday deaths, 37 more Merced County residents were confirmed via laboratory tests to have contracted COVID-19 — the lowest daily case count since Aug. 2.
A total of 7,690 residents have acquired COVID-19 since the pandemic began.
Of those, 1,588 infections are presumed active, meaning they were confirmed within the last 14 days. This tally is significantly lower than Monday’s, which came to 1,917 probable active cases.
Merced County’s testing positivity, meaning the percentage of completed COVID-19 tests in the last week that come back positive, fell substantially from 21.5% on Monday to 11.9% Tuesday. This brings the county closer to the state-defined target of 8% positivity over a period of seven days.
However, Merced County’s case rate per 100,000 residents over the last two weeks is still notably higher than state thresholds. Counties are flagged for the state’s watch list when their data shows more than 100 cases per 100,000 people, even if the positivity rate is in compliance. Merced County stands at 401.5 cases per 100,000 as of Tuesday.
A total of 40,342 coronavirus tests have been completed.
Active hospitalizations among Merced residents with severe COVID-19 cases held steady on Tuesday at 78, with 25 hospitalized in facilities within the county. The number of residents ever hospitalized rose from 521 to 535.
Active COVID-19 outbreaks in Merced County currently number 23. Outbreaks are defined as three or more unrelated, laboratory-confirmed cases linked to a workplace location within a two week period.
Just one positive case constitutes an outbreak at a skilled nursing facility, on account of the high risk environment.
Can county schools reopen while on state’s monitoring list?
Merced County still has a lot of work to do to get off the state monitoring list.
Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier this year mandated that schools in counties on the state’s monitoring list are prohibited to open with in-person classes because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Consequently, Merced County schools have been mandated to open the school year with distance learning.
There is a way for Merced County schools to ask for a waiver from the state to open elementary schools without getting off the state’s monitoring list if the county’s COVID-19 numbers improve.
Sullivan said one of the important numbers the state looks at is the Elevated Disease Transmission. Merced County currently has a case rate of 401.5 per 100,000 residents during a 14-day period. Merced County would have to get that number closer to 200 before the county could be eligible to request a waiver. The county would have to get down to 100 to get off the state monitoring list.
Sullivan said one positive sign has been the daily cases reported have dropped to between 50 and 100 COVID-19 cases each day. The number of daily case was typically 150 to 200 previously.
“The number we need to hit per day to be eligible for that waiver is 40. That’s what our target is,” Sullivan said.
Hospital numbers improving
The number of COVID-19 patients in county hospitals have dropped in the past month.
“We’ve really seen encouraging progress in our hospitalizations,” Sullivan said. “Our hospitalization census here in the county has been consistently lower. When I was here in July we were seeing census of 60 people in our local hospitals and it was becoming very close to overwhelming our systems. We are now consistently around 30 so we’ve seen a really sizable decrease and that’s good news.”
However, Merced County hospitals have only 4.2% of ICU beds open.
“A lot of that is because we do see people who are COVID positive in our ICU for a very extended period of time,” Sullivan said.
Merced County hospitals also only has 20% of ventilators currently available, according to Sullivan.
State strike team visits
County Public Health Director Dr. Rebecca Nanyonjo-Kemp discussed some of the feedback the county received after a visit from the state’s strike teams two weeks ago.
Nanyonjo-Kemp said there was about 12 people from state departments including individuals from Cal/OSHA, California Department of Public Health, California Office of Emergency Services, Department of Industrial Relations.
The teams met with Merced County officials for two days. “They were discussing with us having a united front in addressing some of the issues that are continuing to keep our case count high,” Nanyonjo-Kemp said.
One issue that Nanyonjo-Kemp said the county will need to follow up on with the state is guidance on alternative safe spaces for children.
According to Nanyonjo-Kemp, some areas of the state have been able to work with the state to establish pods to ensure children have an environment to continue learning that helps their social development and social engagement.
“I repeat Merced County is not there yet,” Nanyonjo-Kemp said. “As much as we’d like to be, we’ve heard all the feedback, ‘What about the kids? What about this? What about that?’ Our responsibility is to look at the rates of disease. When they say they need to come down we all need to be singing from the same hymn sheet and trying to get that number down.”
“We can not do it as a health department alone. We need the messaging to reflect because all these things we received from feedback are also all contingent on how long we stay on the county data monitoring list. The quicker we get off that list, the more some of these things that have become community wide issues, and significant points of contention, they no longer will be there,” she added.
Other feedback from the state visit included direction on the guidance for long term disease management, and guidance on alternatives to school.
“If schools are not going to be an option, having children be able to have advocates on their behalf and address their imminent issues when they are experiencing mental health issues and behavioral issues,” Nanyonjo-Kemp said.
“We’ve heard from the public comment that families are attesting to the fact that they need to have something for their children to do, and so we’re at a crossroads because the pandemic is still here. But what can we be doing differently?”
This story was originally published August 25, 2020 at 6:48 PM.
