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Solano County playing catchup – discloses 3 new COVID deaths and 118 previously unreported hospitalizations

NOTE: The information below is not the latest.  CLICK HERE for today’s latest information.
By Roger Straw, Wednesday, December 1, 2021
[See also New York Times, Coronavirus: What we know about Omicron.]

Wednesday, December 1: Solano County reports
3 new deaths, 118 previously unreported hospitalizations and 72 new infections. Solano County AND Benicia remain in a SUBSTANTIAL rate of community transmission.

Solano County COVID dashboard SUMMARY: Wednesday, December 1:
[Sources: see below.]

DEATHS: Solano reported 3 new deaths today.  The County reported 27 COVID deaths in September, 18 in October, and 14 so far in November (all in the last 2 weeks).  A total of 329 Solano residents have died of COVID or COVID-related causes over the course of the pandemic.

CASES: The County reported 72 new COVID cases over the past 2 days.  CASES BY AGE GROUP: 16 of these 72 cases (22%) were youth and children under 18.  37 were age 18-49, 14 were age 50-64, and only 5 were 65+.  Below: color-coded analysis of cases reported by age group, expressed as a percentage of total cases.  Increases are in red and decreases are in green as reported by Solano County since April of 2020.  Note  the steady increase among children and youth of Solano County.  The population of those age 0-17 in Solano County is roughly 22%.COMPARE: U.S. cases among age 0-17 as percentage of total cases is at 15.4% as of today. (From the CDC covid-data-tracker.)

COMMUNITY TRANSMISSION RATE: Over the last 7 days, Solano has seen SUBSTANTIAL community transmission, with 251 new cases (down from 267 on Monday).  CDC FORMULA: Based on Solano County’s population, 450 cases in 7 days would move Solano up into the CDC’s population-based definition of a HIGH transmission rate, and we will need to drop below 225 cases in 7 days to rate as having only MODERATE community transmission.

ACTIVE CASES: Solano’s 329 ACTIVE cases is up from Monday’s 304, and still far above our summer rates.

CASES BY CITY on Wednesday, December 1:

  • Benicia added 4 new cases today, a total of 1,597 cases since the outbreak began, and 16 cases over the last 7 days.  This keeps Benicia in the SUBSTANTIAL rate of community transmission  (see chart below).  MODERATE is defined as less than 14 cases, based on Benicia population.  Benicia will need to maintain fewer than 14 new cases-per-7-days for 30 consecutive days before relaxing its mask mandate.  Note above that Solano County is also currently experiencing SUBSTANTIAL transmission.

  • Dixon added 4 new cases today, total of 2,589 cases.
  • Fairfield added 14 new cases today, total of 12,565 cases.
  • Rio Vista reported 0 new cases today, total of 633 cases.
  • Suisun City added 4 new cases today, total of 3,322 cases.
  • Vacaville added 27 new cases today, a total of 12,394 cases.
  • Vallejo added 19 new cases today, a total of 13,706 cases.
  • Unincorporated added 0 new cases today, a total of 145 cases.

POSITIVE TEST RATE:  Solano’s 7-day percent positivity rate was 6.4% today, down slightly from Monday’s 6.5%.  COMPARE: Today’s California rate is 2.0%.  [Source: Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Tracking Center]  Today’s U.S. rate is 7.42%. [Source: CDC COVID Data Tracker.] 

HOSPITALIZATIONS:

CURRENT hospitalizations were down today from 18 to 15 persons, but still above the range we saw during last summer.

TOTAL hospitalizations: Solano County’s TOTAL hospitalized over the course of the pandemic must be independently discovered in the County’s occasional update of hospitalizations by Age Group and by Race/Ethnicity.  Solano Public Health updated its age and race hospitalizations charts again today, for the second time this week.  The age chart showed 24 previously unreported hospitalizations on Monday, and 118 more today!  Today’s report added 2 youths age 0-17,  44 young adults age 18-49, 36 Solano residents age 50-64, and 36 of our elders age 65+.  Solano hospitals reported a new total of 3,159 COVID patients since the beginning of the outbreak.  (Data on age is more reliable than that on race/ethnicity.)

ICU Bed Availability is 51% today, up substantially from 33% on Monday, and firmly in the County’s GREEN zone.

Ventilator Availability today fell today from 82% to 72%.

MASK MANDATE
Benicia’s mask mandate will remain in effect, at least through December 7.  IMPORTANT – See Steve Golub’s important new ALERT in advance of Council’s December 7 meeting.
Vallejo also passed an indoors mask mandate on August 31.  In the Bay Area, Solano County REMAINS the only holdout against a mask mandate for public indoors spaces.

SOLANO COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS failed to consider an agendized proposal for a countywide MASK MANDATE on Tuesday, September 14.  Bay Area news put Solano in a sad light: all other county health officers issued a joint statement offering details on when they would be able to lift mask mandates (not likely soon).  TV news anchors had to point out that Solano would not be considering such a move since our health officer had not been able to “justify” a mask mandate in the first place.  The Solano Board of Supervisors has joined with Dr. Bela Matyas in officially showing poor leadership on the COVID-19 pandemic.

HOW DOES TODAY’S REPORT COMPARE?  See recent reports and others going back to April 20, 2020 on my ARCHIVE of daily Solano COVID updates (an excel spreadsheet).

>>The data on this page is from the Solano County COVID-19 Dashboard.  The Dashboard is full of much more information and updated Monday, Wednesday and Friday around 4 or 5pm.  On the County’s dashboard, you can hover a mouse or click on an item for more information.  Note the tabs at top for “Summary, Demographics” and “Vaccines.”  Click here to go to today’s Solano County Dashboard.

Sources