A major Sacramento K-12 district has returned to indoor masking, a Bay Area county of more than 1.6 million people has reverted to a countywide mask mandate, and transmission and hospitalization rates for COVID-19 continue to swell throughout California as a new pair of omicron subvariants make up a growing footprint of cases.
The California Department of Public Health on Tuesday reported the statewide case rate at 30.5 per 100,000 residents.
California’s case rate dropped by 11% compared to one week earlier. But that decline came as test positivity increased by nearly a third, up from 6.7% to 8.9% in the past week, reflecting a drop in testing volume. The state recently reached its highest positivity rate in four months.
State health officials said 2,581 patients were hospitalized in California with confirmed virus cases, up 18% in the past week. The latest total included 276 in intensive care units, up only 1.5% in the past week.
The hospital numbers remain well below the peak of the omicron surge in January, when California had more than 15,000 in hospitals and 2,600 in intensive care with confirmed COVID-19. Hospitals still have plentiful amounts of ICU capacity. But virus hospitalizations have jumped by 145%, and ICU cases are up 86%, since May 1.
While Sacramento County’s case rate has shown early signs of leveling off, down about 3% in the past week, its positivity rate has continued to climb, growing from 10.3% to 13% in the same stretch.
“There are some early indications that there might be a slowdown, but it’s too early to tell,” county health officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye said on a Monday call with reporters. “We know that this most recent surge is caused by subvariants of omicron.”
Sacramento County’s 13% positivity ranked ninth-worst among California’s 58 counties, according to Tuesday’s state data update. El Dorado County was fifth at 13.7% and Placer County was 11th at 12.7% and Yuba was 13th at 12.5%.
Positivity percentages are starting to level off in some of the first Bay Area counties hit by the current surge, including San Francisco, Marin, San Mateo and Santa Clara, CDPH data show. Other Bay Area counties, including Napa, Lake and Alameda, have remained on a sharp incline, along with Orange County in Southern California.
Sacramento recorded 169 virus patients in hospital beds, the county’s highest total since March 4. The patient count has jumped from 65 to 169 in the past month, with ICU cases doubling from 10 to 20. Placer County more than tripled from 23 to 76 hospitalized from early May to early June, with intensive care patients nearly tripling from four to 11.
“We are not sure what’s going to happen as time goes on,” Kasirye said Monday. “Our hope is that we’re getting to the peak of this current surge.”
Mask orders return for SCUSD, Alameda County
Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer and Yolo counties all joined the CDC’s high community spread level last week. The federal health agency calls for indoor masking in areas with a high level, which is calculated weekly on Thursdays based on counties’ case rates and hospital figures.
The move for Sacramento County triggered a return for Sacramento City Unified School District to an indoor mask requirement.
The renewed mandate, which took effect Monday at all school sites, will likely persist through the end of the academic year next week for the district of about 40,000 students.
Sacramento City Unified reported nearly six times as many COVID-19 cases among students, and about eight times as many among staff, in May compared to April, according to a district data dashboard updated Tuesday.
Health officials in Alameda County, citing a rapid increase in hospitalizations with COVID-19, reintroduced a mask mandate for indoor public settings that took effect last Friday.
Alameda was not among 13 California counties placed last week by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention into the “high” community level for virus danger, but was on the cusp of reaching the high threshold due to spiking hospital admissions.
Local health officials have said Los Angeles County will return to a mask mandate if it reaches the CDC’s high level. Los Angeles remained in the “medium” level this week, though officials projected the county of 10 million people could enter the high level before the end of June if trends continue.
New countywide mask orders do not appear to be imminent in the Sacramento region.
Kasirye said Sacramento County is continuing to follow state guidance and strongly recommends masking in indoor public settings. Yolo County spokesman John Fout recently told The Sacramento Bee that Yolo would only return to mandatory masking if new cases posed a threat to hospital capacity.
Kasirye said individual businesses in Sacramento County may choose to implement their own mask requirements.
Increase in BA.4 and BA.5 continues
The BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of omicron, which have dominated South Africa and some European nations in recent months, and have also been declared a distinct variant of concern by the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention, are growing increasingly prevalent across the U.S. and in California, new data show.
The European CDC has said that BA.4 and BA.5 appear to be more transmissible and better at evading immune protection than the BA.2 and BA.2.12.1 strains, which currently make up a large majority of cases in the U.S. and were already more contagious than the original omicron variant, BA.1.
The U.S. CDC in a weekly update Tuesday added proportions for BA.4 and BA.5, showing the two newest offshoots of omicron combined for an estimated 13% of positive cases in the U.S. last week – 7.6% were BA.5 and 5.4% were BA.4.
The combined 13% prevalence was up from 7.5% the previous week earlier and from 4.5% the week before that.
The BA.2.12.1 subvariant of omicron remained dominant nationwide, marking 62% of cases. BA.2 made up the remaining 25%, a dwindling proportion as it is being overtaken by the three other, more contagious subvariants. BA.1 has essentially faded away.
BA.4 and BA.5 combined for 13.1% of cases for the CDC region that includes California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and island territories, increasing from 7.5% one week earlier and from 4.9% two weeks earlier. The BA.2.12.1 subvariant represented 56% of cases and BA.2 comprised 31% for that region last week.
BA.4 and BA.5 have been found in the Sacramento area and Bay Area, including in positive cases out of Yolo County and in Santa Clara County wastewater. Healthy Davis Together, one of the only Northern California coronavirus surveillance programs that tests for BA.4 and BA.5, last reported the two subvariants making up 6.1% of Yolo cases for the week ending May 28, compared to 2.3% the week of May 21 and 0.9% the week of May 14.
Because of their ability to evade immune protection from prior infection, some health experts have predicted BA.4 and BA.5 may soon lead to another U.S. surge just as infections appeared to be starting to level off from the wave brought on by BA.2 and BA.2.12.1.
The European CDC has said there have not yet been any indications that BA.4 and BA.5 cause more severe illness than previous variants of omicron.
Sacramento-area numbers by county
Sacramento County’s latest case rate is 34 per 100,000 residents, state health officials said in Tuesday’s update, a 3% decrease from one week earlier.
Hospitals in Sacramento County were treating 169 virus patients Monday, state data show, up from 150 one week earlier. The intensive care unit total held at 20.
Placer County’s latest case rate is 25.9 per 100,000 residents, a 15% decrease from one week earlier.
Hospitals in Placer County were treating 76 virus patients Monday, up from 60 one week earlier. The ICU total increased to 11 from eight.
Yolo County’s latest case rate is 30.4 per 100,000 residents, an 18% decrease from one week earlier. Hospitals in Yolo County were treating two virus patients Monday, down from five a week earlier. The ICU total dropped to zero from one.
El Dorado County’s latest case rate is 23.2 per 100,000 residents, a 10% decrease from one week earlier. Hospitals in El Dorado County were treating 10 virus patients Monday, up from eight a week earlier. The ICU total increased to five from two.
Sutter County’s latest case rate is 20.7 per 100,000 residents, up 8% from last week, and Yuba County’s is 25 per 100,000, down 8%, state health officials reported Tuesday.
The only hospital in Yuba County, which serves the Yuba-Sutter bicounty area, was treating 10 virus patients Monday, up from nine a week earlier. The ICU total dropped to one from two.
