San Diego County Reports 1,859 More Cases of COVID-19, New Death

Photo by KPBS staff

Above: A sign advising visitors to wear a face mask in Torrey Pines State Nature Reserve. October 29, 2020.

San Diego County health officials reported 1,859 new COVID-19 infections, bringing the region’s total to 80,018 cases, with one additional death for an overall death toll of 997.

Saturday marked the 18th day in a row that more than 600 new cases were reported.

A total of 21,000 tests were reported on Saturday and 8% of those came back positive, bringing the 14-day moving average of positive tests to 5.5%, according to the San Diego Public Health Department.

Of the total number of cases in the county, 4,577 – or 5.7% – required hospitalization and 1,010 patients – or 1.3% of all cases – required admission to an intensive care unit.

A total of 18 new community outbreaks were confirmed on Saturday, although information on the types of places they occurred was not available.

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In the previous seven days, 82 community outbreaks have been confirmed. A community outbreak is defined as three or more cases of COVID-19 in one setting and in people from different households in the past 14 days.

San Diego County fell deeper into the most restrictive purple level in the state’s four-level reopening plan on Tuesday with 21.5 new unadjusted COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people. Even with an adjusted rate of 13.1 per 100,000 due to the significant increase in testing by local health authorities, that number far exceeds the more stringent baseline of seven per 100,000 daily cases.

The test’s percentage of positivity is 3.1%, which places it in the least restrictive orange level for this metric.

The county’s Health Equity Indicator, which examines the positivity of testing for areas with the lowest health conditions, is 9.3% and is in the purple level. This metric does not move counties to more restrictive levels, but should move to a less restrictive level.

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