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Benicia City Council continues the Mask Mandate – County reports 1 new death, 7 hospitalizations, 59 new infections

NOTE: The information below is not the latest.  CLICK HERE for today’s latest information.
By Roger Straw, Wednesday, December 8, 2021
[See BREAKING NEWS on Benicia’s mask mandate BELOW.]

Wednesday, December 8: Solano County reports
1 new death , 7 hospitalizations, and 57 new infections. Solano County remains in a SUBSTANTIAL rate of community transmission;  Benicia returns to SUBSTANTIAL transmission over past 7 days.

Solano County COVID dashboard SUMMARY:
[Sources: see below.]

DEATHS: Solano reported 1 new death today.  The County reported 27 COVID deaths in September, 18 in October, 11 in November, and 13 so far in early December (24 in the last 3 weeks, since November 17).  The new death was one of our elders age 65+, a Hispanic/Latinx person.  A total of 339 Solano residents have now died of COVID or COVID-related causes over the course of the pandemic.

CASES: The County reported 57 new COVID cases in the last 2 days.  CASES BY AGE GROUP: 4 of these 57 new cases (only 7%) were youth and children under 18.  31 (54%) were age 18-49, 14  (25%) were age 50-64, and 8 (14%) 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 children and youth aged 0-17 as percentage of total cases is at 15.5% as of today. (From the CDC covid-data-tracker.)

COMMUNITY TRANSMISSION RATE: Over the last 7 days, Solano has seen SUBSTANTIAL community transmission, with 328 new cases (down from 343 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 373 ACTIVE cases is down from Monday’s 402, but still far above our summer rates.

CASES BY CITY on Wednesday, December 8:

  • Benicia added 11 new cases today, a total of 1,617 cases since the outbreak began, and 20 cases over the last 7 days.  This moves Benicia back into the SUBSTANTIAL rate of community transmission after only one report in the MODERATE rate (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 2 new cases today, total of 2,605 cases.
  • Fairfield added 17 new cases today, total of 12,648 cases.
  • Rio Vista reported 0 new cases today, total of 635 cases.
  • Suisun City added 2 new cases today, total of 3,345 cases.
  • Vacaville added 12 new cases today, a total of 12,493 cases.
  • Vallejo added 13 new cases today, a total of 13,790 cases.
  • Unincorporated added 0 new cases today, a total of 146 cases.

POSITIVE TEST RATE:  Solano’s 7-day percent positivity rate was 4.9% today, down slightly from Monday’s 5.0%.  COMPARE: Today’s California rate is 1.9%.  [Source: Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Tracking Center]  Today’s U.S. rate is 8.18%. [Source: CDC COVID Data Tracker.] 

HOSPITALIZATIONS:

CURRENT hospitalizations were steady today at 21 persons, 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 today.  The age chart showed 7 previously unreported hospitalizations today, including 2 young adults age 18-49 and 5 Solano residents age 50-64 (notably none of our elders age 65+).  Solano hospitals reported a new total of 3,180 COVID patients since the beginning of the outbreak.  (Data on age is more reliable than that on race/ethnicity.)

ICU Bed Availability is up today, from 29% on Monday to 39% today, back into the County’s GREEN zone.

Ventilator Availability today is down a bit today from 76% to 74%.

BREAKING NEWS!  BENICIA’S MASK MANDATE REMAINS IN PLACE
Benicia City Council chose yesterday to keep the city’s mask mandate in place for another 30 days and review again in January.  Mayor Young writes, “There was lots of discussion about changing the metrics from case numbers to hospitalizations and vaccination rates as suggested by Dr. Fleming.”  Young continued, “Lionel argued for making the changes now and asserted that that would allow us to end the mandate immediately. However he did not have support for that idea. No vote was taken as we did not change the existing resolution.”
See the video discussion of last night’s Council meeting – CLICK HERE (then scroll down on the agenda and click on item number 21.A – UPDATE ON FACE COVERINGS MANDATE.)
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