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Sonoma County on Monday reported three recent deaths from COVID-19, the latest fallout, health officials said, from a continuing summer wave of virus cases and soaring hospitalizations involving critically ill patients .
As of Sunday, there were 70 people with COVID-19 in local hospitals, including 17 in intensive care. It was only during the deadly wave of winter cases that more local residents were hospitalized with COVID-19 on any given day.
“We are unfortunately seeing more hospitalizations from COVID now than at any time last summer, largely due to the highly contagious delta variant,” said Dr Sundari Mase, Sonoma County health official. . Those who have not received the vaccine continue to be the most vulnerable, she noted.
The three people who died were not vaccinated and had underlying health issues, health officials said. They include a woman who was between 50 and 64 and died on July 28; a woman over 75 who died on July 31; and a man aged 50 to 64 who died on August 1.
They were all being treated at local hospitals when they died, officials said.
“These are preventable tragedies,” Mase said. “In almost all cases, the hospitalized person is not vaccinated. “
Last summer, the daily number of COVID-19 admissions to local hospitals peaked at 51 on July 29. The daily count of coronavirus patients remained high until mid-September and fell to just over 20 until the fall.
In November, COVID-19-related hospitalizations began to climb steeply again, peaking at 102 admissions on January 4. Public health officials and infectious disease experts have repeatedly warned that deaths were weeks behind hospitalization rates.
It remains to be seen whether today’s hospitalizations will result in the types of death rates seen last summer or early winter, when no one was vaccinated.
Mase and other public health experts believe high vaccination rates should temper the death rate from the pandemic this summer. Currently, 71% of eligible residents are fully immunized in Sonoma County.
“Until more people are vaccinated, I fear we will continue to see this increase in hospitalizations,” Mase said.
Steven Buck, spokesperson for Providence St. Joseph Health, which manages Santa Rosa Memorial, Petaluma Valley and Healdsburg hospitals, said almost all patients hospitalized with COVID-19 are not vaccinated. In addition, he said medical staff are seeing “greater acuity” – more serious illness – today than last winter.
The latest transmission rate in Sonoma County is 20.2 new daily cases per 100,000 people, about 10 times what it was in early July.
This change is largely due to new cases among unvaccinated residents. The transmission rate for unvaccinated residents is 46 new cases per 100,000 daily, compared to 10 cases per 100,000 for those who are vaccinated.
The overall positivity of tests, the share of positive tests, is now 8.4%.
The three deaths reported on Monday bring the county’s total pandemic deaths to 337.
You can contact Editor-in-Chief Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or [email protected]. On Twitter @pressreno.
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