Two more Merced County residents reported dead due to COVID-19; hospitalizations spike
Two new COVID-19 related deaths were confirmed by the Merced County Department of Public Health on Friday, raising the total number of resident fatalities since the pandemic began to 64.
One of the deceased residents was female and one was male. One was between age 35-49, and the other was age 65 or older. While one of the deceased did have underlying health conditions prior to their death, the health status of the other is unknown, according to County Public Health.
Fatalities of Merced County residents due to the novel coronavirus have been reported every day this week by County Public Health. Since Monday, 22 individuals have died.
County Public Health on Friday also confirmed an additional 157 new infections, pushing the total local caseload since the pandemic began past 5,000. The tally now stands at 5,012.
Cases presumed active, meaning they were laboratory confirmed within the past two weeks, rose on Friday to 1,767.
CalREDIE data issue causing under count
However, County Public Health continued to warn on Friday that the statewide data issue with the electronic disease reporting system CalREDIE is still causing an under count of the true number of daily COVID-19 cases.
The data problem this week created an estimated backlog of up to 300,000 disease reports to process — most being COVID-19 cases. The state is building a new system to replace the overburdened CalREDIE, which isn’t equipped to handle data of this scale, officials said.
It’s unclear when the data lag began, but some counties, including Merced, began reporting lower than regular numbers during the first few days of August. The issue may be connected to the ballooning number of coronavirus cases overtaxing the system, state officials have said.
State public health officials said on Friday that the problem may have began July 25, when a server running part of the overtaxed CalREDIE system lost power. Technical changes were made to address the problem, but were not reverted back, causing further data delays.
Around the same time, the state apparently stopped receiving data from Quest labs, a major source of COVID-19 test result information, because officials failed to renew a certificate to receive the data on time.
Merced County COVID-19 hospitalizations
The problem does not appear to have affected coronavirus hospital data or death counts. On Friday, Merced County residents hospitalized due to severe COVID-19 infections rose from 80 on Thursday to 90. This is the highest reported number of current hospitalizations yet.
Of those, 57 residents are hospitalized within facilities in the county. A total of 352 county residents have been hospitalized on account of COVID-19 since the pandemic started.
But other important statistics looked at by the state, including case rates per capita and testing positivity percentages, are affected by this week’s under reporting.
Merced County’s testing positivity stayed at 20% Tuesday through Friday, which is slightly lower than previous days. The percentage shows the number of residents screened for COVID-19 over the last week who tested positive. The state set its ideal maximum for counties at 8%.
Merced and 37 other counties are on a state watch list due to their COVID-19 statistics failing to meet the California Department of Public Health’s benchmarks. CDPH is not displaying data for case rates or testing positivity until the data lag issues are resolved, and the watch list has been frozen by the state.
This story was originally published August 7, 2020 at 4:55 PM.
