LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Lake County’s epidemiologist told the Board of Supervisors this week that the county’s COVID-19 daily case rate is growing and has recently been the highest rate in the entire state.
Sarah Marikos, who analyzes and tracks Lake County’s COVID-19 data, last spoke to the board in June.
She returned on Tuesday for an update during which she said that Lake County’s testing rate has declined to the lowest rate since the case surge at the start of the year.
The testing positivity rate had dropped to a low of less than 1% in mid-June but has since increased to a high of 6.3%, the highest rate since the winter surge, Marikos said. The state also is seeing a testing positive case increase.
Over the past three weeks, Lake County’s cases have increased. Marikos said they’ve identified 36 cases for the week beginning July 4.
As of Tuesday, Lake County’s daily case rate, over a seven-day average, was 10.3 cases per 100,000, while Marikos said the state’s rate was between 3 and 4 per 100,000. That’s the highest daily case rate in the state.
On Wednesday, the California Department of Public Health reported that Lake County’s cases per 100,000 over a seven-day average had edged up further still, to 11, remaining the highest daily case rate in California.
Marikos said case rates also have doubled in recent weeks in the Bay Area, Southern California and the greater Sacramento region.
As of this week, Lake County’s COVID-19 deaths is at 63, Marikos said.
Earlier this month, Lake County Public Health reported that its medical staff was looking at documentation regarding deaths not previously recognized as COVID-related that the state had sent to Lake and other counties.
Since then, 18 deaths — none of which were recent, and which date back as far as October, officials said — have been added to the overall total, bringing it to 63.
“It’s standard best practice with any communicable disease to do a review of cases and deaths, and that’s what’s happened over the last couple of weeks. Many counties have undertaken that quality control effort as we’ve gotten through the surge and as we’ve gotten through the big vaccination push,” Marikos said.
In assessing Lake County’s cases, Marikos explained to the board that the majority of them are in younger people.
She said the 20 to 44 age group, which makes up only 26 percent of the county’s population, is disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, and makes up 55 percent of the caseload. That group, she noted, is of working age and is out and about in the community.
At the same time, three out of five people in the 18 to 49 age group are completely unvaccinated, she said.
Marikos said focusing on vaccinations for young people is very important as the county moves into the summer and as the more transmissible Delta variant — which already has been confirmed in Lake County — increases across the state.
She said 50.2%, or 27,700 Lake County residents age 12 and older, are fully vaccinated, while 6.9%, or 3,800, are partially vaccinated, and the remaining 42.9% of the population are not vaccinated.
In contrast, 61% of Californians are vaccinated. Marikos showed data putting Lake County in the middle of California’s counties for vaccination rates, with Lassen County at the bottom, with 30%, and Marin County at more than 80%.
Board Chair Bruno Sabatier asked Marikos about the percentage of those testing positive who have been vaccinated.
Marikos said she didn’t have that data in front of her, but that the number of people testing positive who have been vaccinated is extremely low.
However, she said a state report from a few weeks before had put the daily case rate for unvaccinated individuals at 4 to 5 per 100,000, while in vaccinated individuals it was 0.5 per 100,000.
Sabatier asked to have that information in the next presentation. Marikos said she would be happy to bring it.
At that point in the discussion, she reported that she had just gotten a note from her team that of the hundreds of cases they’ve had since the vaccine rollout, only about five involved vaccinated individuals.
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County epidemiologist gives COVID-19 case update to supervisors
- Elizabeth Larson
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