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The COVID-19 toll in Sonoma County continues to rise, with local public health officials reporting in the first six days of February a total of 15 recent deaths linked to the virus.
County officials reported five deaths on Monday, two on Tuesday, three on Thursday and five more on Friday. This brings the total number of deaths from a pandemic to 275.
County officials released some details of the last eight deaths on Friday and Saturday. Most of these deaths from COVID-19 occurred between January 30 and February 1.
There is often a significant gap between the date of death and the date they are reported. A death, involving a man aged 55 to 64 who lived in a specialized nursing home, occurred on December 27.
Four of the people who died were women 75 years of age or older, and two of them lived in qualified retirement homes while the rest lived at home. A man aged 75 or over lived in a nursing home. The other two men were between 65 and 74 years old and lived with them.
As of Friday evening, the county reported 165 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus. Over the past five days, the county has averaged just under 100 reported cases per day, a significant drop from the 250 to 300 new cases per day that were reported during the winter wave of December and January.
Public health and infectious disease experts say deaths often delay new cases by a month, so the fatal fallout from an outbreak is often seen even after the outbreak begins to subside.
“Our case rate continues to drop,” Dr Sundari Mase said during a COVID-19 press briefing on Friday. Mase said the county’s average daily case rate per 100,000 population was now 26.9.
“And that’s down from 34.3 just five days ago,” she said, adding that the current case rate is still well above the threshold needed for the county to move to l next step, less restrictive, of the plan to reopen the state.
As case rates improve, the number of local COVID-19 hospitalizations is also declining. According to state public health data, there were 62 local COVID-19 patients in local hospitals on Friday.
That figure is significantly lower than the record 110 hospitalizations across the county on Jan. 7. Of the 62 patients with COVID-19 at local hospitals, 17 are receiving intensive care.
You can contact Editor-in-Chief Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or at [email protected]. On Twitter @pressreno.
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