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Chart via Humboldt County. | Click here to see it bigger.
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The highly transmissible Delta variant of COVID-19 has sent communities across the United States, including Humboldt County, to the darkest days of the pandemic, with soaring rates of cases, hospitalizations and deaths to the in recent weeks.
Even more alarmingly, Delta has been shown to be more capable than previous variants of causing “breakthrough” cases, that is, of infecting people who have been fully vaccinated.
Still, provisional data released Friday by the Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) shows that in the last peak in cases, unvaccinated residents accounted for two and a half times as many cases as those with been vaccinated. (The county population was roughly 50-50 between vaxxed and unvaxxed during this time.)
Data also shows that in June and July, unvaccinated county residents who contracted COVID-19 were nearly four times more likely to require hospitalization than those who received their jab (s). Vaccinated residents had a hospitalization rate of 6.9 per 100,000 while the rate among unvaccinated residents was 26.9.
This data is featured in the agenda for Tuesday’s scheduled meeting of the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, along with an update from health worker Dr Ian Hoffman.
That update, which you can read in full below, was written last Thursday, a day before the county announced its highest daily total of new confirmed cases – 100 of them – along with the death of a resident in his 40s, marking the county’s 56th COVID death. To date, no fully vaccinated person has died from COVID-19 in Humboldt County.
Here is Hoffman’s update:
If there’s one thing the past few weeks have shown us, it’s that we always need to be prepared for rapid changes with COVID-19. The arrival of the Delta variant has radically changed the situation in our county. The increase in cases seen in many counties has now hit here, with a 400% increase in cases within weeks. Along with this, there has been a dramatic increase in hospitalizations, peaking at 25 hospitalizations for COVID-19 a few days ago.
We suspect it could go higher and we are closely monitoring the situation in hospitals. In previous outbreaks, hospitalizations remained well below 20 beds. Hospital staff, clinical staff, public health staff, really everyone in healthcare, all of whom have worked tirelessly for the past 18 months to treat and prevent COVID-19 have received a devastating blow with this news. Many in the community are noticing more illnesses, voluntarily canceling events due to concerns, resuming safety measures that were taken during the latest outbreaks of COVID-19.
It is with this urgent need that Public Health decided, in consultation with many community leaders in our county, to reinstate the mask’s mandate as of 12:01 am on Saturday, August 7. We are taking this step to keep our rural health care system in balance, which is already under enormous pressure, to make sure we can keep businesses open, keep events safe, and keep schools on track towards the complete reopening in a few moments. weeks.
We would like to publicly share the data on the current increase in our Humboldt County epidemiology program. Please find attached a graph that shows the case rate for unvaccinated and fully vaccinated populations in our county. You can see the sharp increase in cases with this latest Delta surge, much larger than the previous two surges (winter surge with Epsilon, spring surge with Alpha). And you can see the marked difference in cases and hospitalizations among those fully vaccinated in Humboldt County. Our local data is consistent with what is seen nationally with the Delta variant. As we see groundbreaking cases, we are also seeing a dramatic reduction in hospitalizations and deaths among fully vaccinated people, reinforcing the importance of getting vaccinated.
There have been a lot of ups and downs in this pandemic. It’s another one of those great pendulum swings, and given the journey so far, it’s unlikely to be the last. Hospitals are bracing for an even larger potential increase in cases in the coming weeks, as they have in the past. Public health is stepping up testing and investigation again as we have multiple times throughout the pandemic to deal with outbreaks. Ultimately, vaccination will remain the key tool to pull us out of the pandemic by preventing serious illness and death from COVID-19.
We urge all eligible people to get vaccinated. If you are unsure, please search for a reliable source of vaccine information in your community.
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