San Diego County Health Officials Report Case Spike For Second Straight Day
Speaker 1: 00:01 This morning, the nation's top infectious disease expert, dr. Anthony Fowchee told Congress that COVID-19 will remain a threat to the nation. At least through the end of this year. Those words seem to be playing out in San Diego. As health officials acknowledge a spike in positive tests over the last two days, a modest increase in cases as being seen throughout California, as well as a bump up in hospitalizations. So our San Diego County officials who lobbied for the right to speed up reopening, rethinking their strategy. Joining me is KPBS reporter Matt Hoffman, who reported on the County COVID-19 briefing on Monday and Matt, welcome to the program. Hey Maureen. Well, first of all, give us an update on the latest Corona virus statistics from the County. Speaker 2: 00:48 Yeah. So in the last two days, so we're talking Sunday and Monday, we've seen two days of 300 plus cases. We saw the daily high on Sunday with 310 cases. And we've also seen something that officials look at is the positivity rate among cases that we have testing fluctuating from 4,000 tests a day to sometimes 10,000 tests a day. But it's this positivity rate, which usually we fall in between, you know, like two and 4% and like an average of like two and a half percent. Um, on Sunday we saw that positivity rate among cases jumped to 7%. Now health officials call that concerning yesterday. We saw that positivity rate go to 5%. Now, in terms of, you know, is this a big spike in cases we're seeing, is this because everybody's out and we really don't know. In fact, health officials are basically attributing this to sort of a delay in testing. Now they can't say for sure that that's the total reason for the increase, but they say they're getting back some of their results delayed. So they don't want to say that they're seeing a big spike in cases. They think it's a due to some delays in their systems. Speaker 1: 01:43 Now statewide, there's been a 16% increase in hospitalization rates in the last two weeks. Our hospitalization rates going up here too. Speaker 2: 01:52 Yeah. You know, yesterday, a County supervisor, Nathan Fletcher said that hospitalization rates and ICU beds here are remaining flat. So we're not seeing sort of the slight uptick that we're seeing across the state of California. Uh, but something that we know that that's something that's a lagging indicator that the County talks about. So when we see these outbreaks, um, they say that that's something that could come up later in terms of these hospital beds filling up, um, especially as they go through their contract tracing the, see if the virus has spread to additional people. Now we know that from health officials, we're seeing a trend in terms of at least these outbreaks that it's happening because people aren't wearing face coverings. Um, and yesterday County supervisor, Nathan Fletcher basically said, Hey, look, this face covering mandate is in effect to basically, you know, protect the freedoms that we have right now. Speaker 2: 02:32 Oh, we're also concerned about the number of folks that are out, uh, without observing physical distancing and face covering. Uh, and it is important to note that the, the effort and intention behind what we are doing is we reopened is to preserve the integrity of our healthcare system. And to date, we have not seen, uh, an increase in our hospitalizations or ICU utilization from COVID. So they haven't seen that increase yet, Maureen, but it's something that's definitely on the horizon. I mean, just in the last seven days, we've seen 10 outbreaks in the last seven days. Now, three of those are new outbreaks. We know that two of them have been at retail locations and one of those at a construction business, but it sounds like, you know, that's just, you know, not wearing mass coverings is sort of the theme they're seeing among these outbreaks. We also know from hearing from health officials yesterday, um, we've been seeing a lot of protests happening in San Diego County over the last month, um, for racial justice and thousands of people turning out in downtown open in North County. Uh, but they say that, you know, while they were expecting to see some traces, they haven't seen any outbreaks, uh, related to the protest yet. Speaker 1: 03:28 And those community outbreaks trigger a threshold for the County that may lead to a rollback or a slow down in reopening isn't that? Right? Speaker 2: 03:38 Right. So basically if we hit seven community outbreaks and what does a community outbreak, that's like an outbreak at like a restaurant or like a business. And that has to be three or more cases. And so basically if we have seven of these community outbreaks in seven days, that's a trigger for the County where they, you know, have to go look, they have to look and say, you know, we need to take some corrective action here, or maybe look about pausing our reopening. And that's basically what officials did here. They paused reopenings. Now they didn't roll back anything and said, Hey, you know, no more dining. And at restaurants, we're going to close tattoo shops, stuff like that. They didn't do anything like that. They just paused reopening here. Um, and it's sort of interesting, worth noting. And we talked about, uh, what is a community outbreak? It's three or more cases we've heard from County health officials yesterday that all but two of the outbreaks in our County here have been with 10 or less people. Now, they said that those have been relatively small outbreaks. And I think they partially attribute that to some of their community tracers who have been able to kind of go out there and find these people before it can spread to even larger groups of people. Speaker 1: 04:31 As we talk about all these modest increases, has there been an increase in deaths in San Diego? Speaker 2: 04:37 Oh, we haven't seen a high increase in deaths or anything, but keep in mind too, that that's sort of a lagging indicator when it comes to these like hospitalization rates too. Cause we could see these COVID cases now. Uh, but it may be a while until, you know, some of the, one of these persons has a contact, uh, with an older individual that might send them to the hospital and then they might die. So, um, you know, as we see these, uh, know higher number of cases, it might be a while until we see, um, possibly higher numbers of that's. If we even see that at all, Speaker 1: 05:00 Which area of the County are most of the new positive cases coming from. Speaker 2: 05:04 Yeah, we did hear from the County yesterday on this and they said that the trend is still in the South County, you know, a reporter called and said, you know, we've been seeing some new cases up in the North County. You guys see any trends there. And they said that the big trend that they're still seeing is just a high number of cases in the South County. Um, uh, to more than two thirds of cases in San Diego, um, are Hispanic or Latino. So we're definitely seeing, um, a large population there in our South Bay community. Speaker 1: 05:26 And what kind of demographic information does the County have on these new cases? I've been reading that in some States they're seeing cases among younger people in their twenties and thirties increasing. Speaker 2: 05:37 Yeah. You know, there was an interesting tidbit that came out of the meeting yesterday. Now they said the doctor Wilma wouldn't the County public health officer. She said that, you know, cases and people under 40 are up while cases and people over 60 are trending down in our County. Um, and she sorta touched on too, that you hate, you know, a lot of young people think that they're sort of invincible when it comes to the virus. And even though they are seeing the virus infect young people, something we have to keep in mind here, especially as, as we move forward is, you know, how do we, you know, care for that elderly population? That's a lot more vulnerable when it comes to that. So, you know, even though young people might not be as susceptible to the virus, they need to make sure that they are taking precautions, that they're washing their hands, that they are physically distancing because God forbid they give it to somebody who has a low immune system or who's in this elderly range. Speaker 2: 06:18 And then they die from the virus. And how concerned are San Diego public health officials by these latest increases? We do know that they are a little bit concerned County supervisor, Greg Cox yesterday. He said that that, you know, 7% positive rate on Sunday, um, is something that is concerning to the County. Um, but they don't seem to be too concerned in terms of, you know, we are hitting this trigger right now, but we aren't seeing, you know, a full rollback of, uh, you know, like we talked about it, you know, no more dining in or things like that. Um, but something that we are seeing as a pause on future reopenings now you might say to yourself what isn't reopened yet, but we know that there are things like SeaWorld Lego land, uh, Kaboom, that music festival up in Del Mar. Those are businesses and events that hinge on large gatherings that we just aren't there yet in the state. Speaker 2: 06:59 And now even if like, let's say on Monday, next week, the state comes out and says, Hey, you know, concerts and, um, you know, large gatherings theme parks, they can open up on Wednesday. Now, according to the County yesterday, they say that they're not going to adopt that yet because they want to wait to see, um, a more normalizing trend among cases. And they want to see those community outbreaks go back down before they adopt any more guidance in terms of future reopenings. Now last week, supervisor Nathan Fletcher said there would be additional enforcement against businesses that are not complying with the reopening rules. Did officials say, what action, if any was taken? Yeah. County supervisor, Nathan Fletcher last week said that they were going to be doing some targeted enforcement. And that was based upon hitting that trigger of the community outbreaks. Now, yesterday we had a chance to ask him if any of that, uh, enforcement was done over the weekend. Speaker 2: 07:44 And we know from County officials that that's a no right now. Um, and we know that there's a lot of restaurants out there that are sort of welcoming this enforcement. Um, you talk to them and they say, it's sort of like the wild West out there when it comes to places. Because, you know, even though they're supposed to be following a sort of state guidelines and County guidelines, it's just, you know, the counties hoping that restaurant owners and businesses they fill out and they just sort of hope that they're complying with the orders. There's nobody going out there and checking on them. Although the governor has talked about using whether it's Cal OSHA or whether it's using the alcoholic beverage control to go out there and maybe do some of these checks, they say that they want to know about, about businesses that aren't in compliance and they want to go out there and find those bad actors. I have been speaking with KPBS reporter, Matt Hoffman and Matt. Thank you very much. Thanks, boring.
