Stanislaus County’s COVID death rate among worst in California. How high do we rank?
Stanislaus County has the third highest coronavirus deaths per capita in California, according to a statewide tracking system.
Over a nine-month period, the county has recorded 483 deaths for a rate of 89.6 deaths per 100,000 residents.
Stanislaus has reported 55 deaths from COVID-19 disease this month as a recent surge has run rampant in Modesto and other cities. The grim toll midway through this month has surpassed the total for November.
According to the Los Angeles Times tracker, the coronavirus mortality rate is highest in Imperial County, with 208.6 deaths per 100,000, followed by Inyo, a small county with a per-capita rate of 99.5.
Stanislaus, the 16th most populous of the state’s 58 counties, ranks 11th in overall deaths and has nearly three times that of San Francisco County.
The county’s COVID death rate is higher than its Northern San Joaquin Valley neighbors. San Joaquin County has 535 deaths or 73.1 per 100,000. Merced has 207 or 76.9 per 100,000.
Stanislaus is a county where elected officials have exhibited mixed messages on the seriousness of the pandemic, often saying that local enforcement of state health orders won’t be a priority.
Katherine Borges of Salida is among residents who want to see more action from the county and local measures to slow down the outbreak. “If the county is doing something, we don’t know about it,” Borges said. “They don’t communicate and tell us what they are doing.”
The county, which received more than $100 million in federal CARES Act money and related funding from the state, has spent to beef up testing and contact tracing, given grants to affected businesses, provided hotel rooms to isolate at-risk homeless people and paid nonprofits to distribute food, utility assistance and education support to hardshipped families, among other efforts.
But the county has stayed away from contagious disease measures like stringent mask orders or enforcement of curfews to break up gatherings. And it hasn’t identified the location of worksite outbreaks or other causes that send infected people to the hospital and result in deaths.
About 80 percent of the coronavirus deaths in Stanislaus County have been in the 65 and older age group, according to the county’s dashboard.
Gov. Gavin Newsom expressed concern about the rising statewide death toll Tuesday — a daily average of 163 state residents have lost their lives to COVID-19 in the last seven days, up from 40 per day a month ago.
Newsom said the state has activated a mutual aid system for morgues and coroner offices in counties with fewer resources. A graphic posted at Tuesday’s press conference said 60 refrigeration storage units were on stand-by in counties and outside hospital buildings.
In another grim development, the state purchased 5,000 additional body bags for its inventory and recently distributed bags to Los Angeles, San Diego and Inyo County on the eastern edge of California.
Sgt. Luke Schwartz, spokesman for the Stanislaus County coroner, said none of the state’s refrigeration storage units have been placed in this county. He said the newer coroner’s facility completed in 2015 off Oakdale Road has ample storage space for bodies.
Schwartz said the coroner’s office is not overly stressed by the coronavirus deaths this fall. A coroner response is not required for every COVID-related death to establish the cause or retrieve the remains.
Local hospitals are packed
With hundreds of new cases reported every day, local hospitals are packed with coronavirus patients. Those admissions rose to 335 on Tuesday, about 100 more than the previous peak in July. The 67 in intensive care units is three more than the high mark in August.
Stanislaus and other counties in a state-designated San Joaquin Valley region were subject to a tighter stay-home order more than a week ago when regional ICU capacity dropped below 15 percent. Less than 2 percent of the region’s ICU beds are available this week.
In Stanislaus County, hospital spokespeople have said for months they have surge plans for opening more space for seriously ill COVID-19 patients.
For example, at Memorial Medical Center in Modesto, where regular ICU beds are full, nursing staff and doctors took over a stepdown unit to care for COVID-19 patients. If the situation worsens, the hospital has a plan to convert another unit for those patients, a staff member said Tuesday.
Space is not the biggest challenge for the 425-bed Memorial so much as finding qualified staff to care for the sickest patients. “You need highly specialized equipment to take care of them and you need respiratory therapists,” a staff member said. “We have been trying to hire travel nurses. We are hiring as much as we can.”
Hospitals are also making plans for vaccination of nurses and physicians with the Pfizer vaccine.
The state is working to address staffing shortages across California by imposing a shorter quarantine time for health care workers who test positive for coronavirus. Rather than 10 days, it’s now seven as long as they test negative on Day 5.
Nurse-to-patient ratios are more flexible. The state also is tapping the Health Corps and California National Guard to assist hospitals with staffing needs, and has a request in for 200 medical personnel from the Department of Defense.
As hospitals fill with patients, the state has alternative care facilities for overflow such as Sleep Train Arena in Sacramento, which has 20 beds ready and 200 more on “warm status.”
Top state officials expect that measures like a 10 p.m. curfew and regional stay-home orders, which close indoor restaurants, hair salons and church services, may not have a significant affect on the surge for 45 to 60 days.
County leaders hear the latest update
Dr. Julie Vaishampayan, county health officer, didn’t identify any principal sources of new cases in a presentation to county supervisors Tuesday evening. And no major strategies for tackling the outbreak emerged from the meeting.
Mary Ann Lilly, managing director for the county Health Services Agency, said at a previous board meeting the county’s surveillance and contact tracing team was much better prepared for the fall surge than it was during the explosion of cases last summer.
But given the sheer number of new cases — more than 2,200 last week — Lilly said it’s impossible to call everyone who tests positive and tell them to isolate. “We are working on how to prioritize that,” Lilly said.
Contact tracing has found that 50 percent of people in production work who tested positive had gone to the workplace with symptoms. Significant percentages of people in other occupations have also worked while exhibiting symptoms, so the county will come out with messaging urging people to stay home if they’re sick, Vaishampayan said.
In one bright spot in Tuesday’s presentation, Vaishampayan said doctors have seen few, if any signs of seasonal flu. An even worse crisis is feared if a regular flu season, coupled with COVID-19, were to overwhelm hospitals.
Brian Jensen, regional vice president of the Hospital Council of Northern and Central California, told supervisors there’s no need to panic about the pressure on hospitals.
“Hospital leaders are able to manage this and health care workers are very resilient,” said Jensen, who added later it’s worrisome the longer it goes on.
He said the biggest need for hospitals is staffing. The workforce has been depleted during the pandemic by retirements and workers taking leaves of absence to support children at home who are not in school, Jensen said.
Nurses are in high demand in other states battling the COVID pandemic, making it difficult for California hospitals to hire people from outside the state. “There is no cavalry coming over the hill,” Jensen said.
Supervisor Terry Withrow tried to find a silver lining in the data, noting the proportion of cases now resulting in hospitalization is not as large as before, possibly because of younger adults getting sick.
Regardless of the age breakdown, hospitalizations are running 50 percent higher during the current surge than last summer.
Supervisor Vito Chiesa said the county is going to rely on vaccination “to get us back to normal.” About 3,900 doses of the Pfizer vaccine allocated to Stanislaus County for health care workers is expected to arrive soon but vaccines for the general population are months away.
This story was originally published December 16, 2020 at 5:08 AM.
