Is the COVID omicron surge peaking in Stanislaus County? Here’s what the data show
The COVID omicron surge shows no signs of peaking in Stanislaus County.
News reports suggest the fast-spreading omicron surge was reaching a high point in parts of the Bay Area and in states that were struck early by omicron.
Stanislaus County reported 2,961 new cases from Friday to Sunday, a number that’s probably a significant undercount because of the use of home tests and delays in getting PCR test results.
A county update Tuesday afternoon reported 1,068 additional cases of COVID-19 and five deaths. The people who died were over 50 years old and had underlying medical conditions, a county spokesperson said.
Local hospital admissions of COVID-positive patients grew to 246, up from 199 on Thursday, with 40 patients in intensive care units.
The seven-day average case rate rose to 171 per 100,000 population. With positive coronavirus tests exceeding 1,000 per day, the county is on track this week to reach a milestone of 100,000 total cases since COVID-19 first appeared here in March 2020.
The total case count was 99,234, as of Tuesday.
The county’s online dashboard showed upward of 7,764 individual tests per day in the past week, twice the daily number in early January. Test positivity has leveled off at 17.8 percent this week.
A notice on the appointment system for OptumServe test sites in Salida, Ceres and Turlock said the state was seeing unprecedented demand for COVID testing, causing delays in reporting test results.
“They reported to us that it’s taking 72 hours to get results,” Kamlesh Kaur, a county health services spokeswoman, said in a text. “A lot of it has to do with volume of tests coming in and staffing issues.”
The county also has mobile testing sites. Testing is also offered by health care providers, pharmacies, clinics and at a Stanislaus State University site in Turlock.
Kaur said the county hasn’t heard anything from the state about shipping additional home tests for the general public. President Joe Biden’s administration is purchasing a billion home tests and people could start placing orders for the free tests on a website Tuesday.
The omicron variant is considered to cause less severe illness, but it is much more contagious, threatening to spread the respiratory illness to people with chronic illness, who are vulnerable to complications.
California has higher case rate
The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) expects that under-staffed hospitals across the state will be stressed as the omicron surge continues. The state tallied 14,639 COVID hospitalizations, as of Tuesday, with 2,311 patients in ICUs.
The state is averaging 110,214 new cases of COVID-19 per day, with a 270.6 per 100,000 case rate that is higher than Stanislaus County’s. Test positivity statewide is 21 percent. California is averaging 42 COVID-related deaths per day.
Childrens hospitals are also showing an increase in COVID-19 admissions as omicron spreads in communities.
The state health department advised California residents to get vaccinated and boosted due to the waning immunity of the COVID vaccine and the spread of the omicron variant. The state recommended booster shots for people age 12 years or older if they completed the mRNA vaccination at least five months ago or had the Johnson & Johnson shot at least two months ago.
Studies continue to look at the risk of severe illness in unvaccinated people infected with omicron. The CDPH said in a news release that “real-world” evidence is showing the vaccine “is preventing severe illness, hospitalization, and death.”
According to a CDPH fact sheet for the omicron variant, the symptoms can feel like a common cold or flu, with nasal congestion.
