Most California counties are seeing a surge in coronavirus — including San Luis Obispo
The number of COVID-19 cases is up nationally and in many California counties in the last two weeks, including in San Luis Obispo County, where the rate of positive tests has more than doubled.
That increase has caused some confusion: Is it due to the fact that more people are getting tested, as Vice President Mike Pence said last week? Or is the virus really spreading again in the weeks since counties have begun reopening their economies?
It’s both.
“As expected, SLO County’s COVID-19 positivity rate is increasing as we expand testing and continue to open for business,” San Luis Obispo County Public Health Officer Dr. Penny Borenstein said in a news release Monday.
State officials say they have registered 3.5 million tests as of this week, now hitting more than 60,000 a day, a large increase from daily numbers in March, April and May.
However, a Sacramento Bee analysis of data in California counties shows that the positive test result rate is going up as well in much of the state over the past few weeks, which means the virus is spreading to more people.
The Bee looked at what percentage of Californians tested positive on Wednesday, June 10, and what percentage tested positive on Monday, June 22.
The positive rate went up in 38 of the state’s 58 counties, including counties along the Central Coast.
“This is far from over,” state Public Health Officer Dr. Sonia Angell said in an email to The Bee Tuesday.
“Increased testing will continue to detect more cases, but this only serves as evidence that COVID-19 is in our communities. Continued increases ... are expected and likewise, hospitalizations are starting to increase. The safest place for all of us is at home, and when we go out for essential needs or services, we must wear face coverings and keep physical distance from others because that’s what helps us protect one another.”
Testing in SLO County
Health officials say testing for the virus plays a critical role now in minimizing the spread. It enables county health workers to contact people who have tested positive to ask who they have associated with and in turn attempt to contact those people to ask them to get tested and to quarantine themselves if necessary.
The rise in cases, however, has put county contact tracers under pressure as they deal with higher coronavirus caseloads. San Luis Obispo County now has five to six full-time contact tracers and is in the process of hiring 13 more tracers. It’s goal is to get to 24 total.
In SLO County, testing has significantly increased as the pandemic continues. At least 19,114 tests have been conducted by private and public health labs in the county as of Tuesday.
On average, 143 tests are conducted per day per 100,000 people in the county, which is below the state’s target.
The state wants counties to conduct or have the ability to conduct 150 or more tests per 100,00 people a day on average.
State-sponsored pop-up testing clinics have recently increased the county’s testing capacity to 300 tests per day — which does not include the capacity of private testing labs.
Positive test rate remains low
State health officials say they want counties to keep their positive rate under 8 percent. Counties with rates higher than that are at risk of being told to start closing down their economies. The number of counties on that list has jumped in the last two weeks from three earlier in the month to seven as of this week.
The seven counties are: Imperial, Glenn, Tulare, Stanislaus, Merced, Riverside and San Joaquin.
San Luis Obispo County’s positivity rate has remained low, but it is rising. In a little less than two weeks, it increased about 1.3 percentage points, more than doubling from 0.87 positives per 100 tests to 2.17.
That rate places SLO County dead center of the pack, No. 29 among California counties.
However, the increase does not mean the county will reverse its reopening measures.
“Although our positivity rate has increased slightly recently (and currently, according to the state’s statistics, is at about 2%), it is still well below the state’s initial criteria of 8% to reopen,” Public Health Department spokesperson Michelle Shoresman wrote in an email to The Tribune.
“County Public Health continues to monitor (positivity rate) and other metrics, and would not use this metric alone to make decisions about what can continue to reopen or when we should slow that process.”
Shoresman said another metric the county is monitoring is the number of people hospitalized or in the ICU.
On Wednesday, the county had nine patients hospitalized with two in the ICU. Those numbers have remained low throughout the pandemic, hitting a maximum of 10 hospitalizations and four ICU patients.
How neighboring counties compare
To the north and south, Monterey County and Santa Barbara County are ranked 9th and 10th in the state for highest positivity rate, respectively.
Santa Barbara County, which has roughly 174,200 more residents, has around the same number of tests per day per 100,000 people as SLO County, according to state data. Whereas Monterey County has 164,748 more residents than San Luis Obispo County and conducts 116 tests per capita.
In Santa Barbara County, 6.46 test results are positive per 100 tests. In recent weeks, its positivity rate has increased by 3.1%.
Monterey County’s positivity rate reflects 6.85 positive results per 100 tests. The county’s positivity rate has increased 1.7% since June 10.
Overall in California as of June 22, the positive test rate stands at 4.8 percent, slightly higher overall than two weeks earlier.
