[BenIndy Editor: Here in Solano County, our Public Health Department scaled back on virus reporting a month ago, on June 23. Solano now updates its COVID-19 Dashboard only on Mon., Wed. and Fri.. Previously, the dashboard was updated 5 days a week M-F. – R.S.]
In this Jan. 11, 2021 file photo, Nebraska Gov. Pete Rickets points to vaccination statistics during a news conference in Lincoln, Neb. Several states scaled back their reporting on COVID-19 in July 2021, just as cases across the country tripled with the delta variant of the virus spreading quickly among the unvaccinated. The shift to weekly instead of daily reporting in Florida, Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota was also accompanied by less detail about the virus in Florida and Nebraska, and some officials described the move as part of a return to normal. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)Vallejo Times-Herald, By Josh Funk, The Associated Press, July 25, 2021
OMAHA,NEB.>> Several states scaled back their reporting of COVID-19 statistics this month just as cases across the country started to skyrocket, depriving the public of real-time information on outbreaks, cases, hospitalizations and deaths in their communities.
The shift to weekly instead of daily reporting in Florida, Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota marked a notable shift during a pandemic in which coronavirus dashboards have become a staple for Americans closely tracking case counts and trends to navigate a crisis that has killed more than 600,000 people in the U.S.
In Nebraska, the state actually stopped reporting on the virus altogether for two weeks after Gov. Pete Ricketts declared an end to the official virus emergency, forcing news reporters to file public records requests or turn to national websites that track state data to learn about COVID statistics. The state backtracked two weeks later and came up with a weekly site that provides some basic numbers.
Other governments have gone the other direction and released more information, with Washington, D.C., this week adding a dashboard on breakthrough cases to show the number of residents who contracted the virus after getting vaccines. Many states have recently gone to reporting virus numbers only on weekdays.
When Florida changed the frequency of its virus reporting earlier this month, officials said it made sense given the decreasing number of cases and the increasing number of people being vaccinated.
Cases started soaring soon after, and Florida earlier this week made up up one-fifth of the country’s new coronavirus infections. As a result, Florida’s weekly releases — typically done on Friday afternoons — have consequences for the country’s understanding of the current summer surge, with no statewide COVID stats coming out of the virus hotspot for six days a week.
In Florida’s last two weekly reports, the number of new cases shot up from 23,000 to 45,000 and then 73,000 on Friday, an average of more than 10,000 day. Hospitals are starting to run out of space in parts of the state. With cases rising, Democrats and other critics have urged state officials and Gov. Ron DeSantis to resume daily outbreak updates.
“There was absolutely no reason to eliminate the daily updates beyond an effort to pretend like there are no updates,” said state Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat from the Orlando area.
The trend of reducing data reporting has alarmed infectious disease specialists who believe that more information is better during a pandemic. People have come to rely on state virus dashboards to help make decisions about whether to attend large gatherings or wear masks in public, and understanding the level of risk in the community affects how people respond to virus restrictions and calls to get vaccinated.
“We know that showing the data to others actually is important because the actions that businesses take, the actions that schools take, the actions that civic leaders take, the actions that community leaders take, the actions that each of us individually take are all influenced by our perception of what the risk is out there,” said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, who leads the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco.
Associated Press Writer Bobby Caina Calvan contributed to this report.
There you will see that as of 9:23am on July 24, among all Californians, 52.7% are fully vaccinated, meaning they have either received both shots of a two-dose regime from Pfizer or Moderna, or the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Solano County had administered 458,724 doses of vaccine. 58.4% of county residents had received at least one dose, but only 48.8% were fully vaccinated.
Our fully vaccinated rate of 48.8% puts us right around average, ranking 27th among California’s 58 counties. Our one-dose measure ranks us a little better, 22nd out of 58 counties.
It’s interesting to compare Solano to our Bay Area neighbors: among the fully vaccinated, Solano ranks dead last among our 9 Bay Area and nearby neighbor counties.
Rank
County
Doses administered
At least 1 dose
Fully vaccinated
1
Marin
381,136
78.20%
72.20%
2
San Francisco
1,221,452
76.10%
69.60%
3
Santa Clara
2,655,770
74.50%
68.30%
4
San Mateo
1,045,079
73.80%
67.10%
5
Contra Costa
1,484,380
69.90%
65.10%
6
Alameda
2,127,975
70.80%
64.80%
7
Napa
178,871
69.50%
61.10%
8
Sonoma
621,710
67.00%
60.40%
9
Santa Cruz
328,312
65.50%
57.00%
10
Yolo
245,168
62.00%
55.10%
11
Sacramento
1,564,963
56.20%
50.00%
12
Solano
458,724
58.40%
48.80%
Only Sacramento County has fewer residents who have received only 1 dose.
And… vaccination rates by Solano cities and zip codes – Benicia at 80%!
I tracked down Benicia’s vaccination rate on the State of California’s Open Data Portal. It’s complicated, and I can’t for the life of me figure out how I got there, but here’s the page you want: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/ca.open.data/viz/LHJVaccineEquityPerformance/MapView. This will open a map showing the instruction, “Click anywhere to load an interactive data experience.” You click on the map and another map that looks identical opens. But this map is interactive – click the + (plus sign) 2 or 3 times to enlarge the map, and then you can hover your mouse over our Solano cities and zips for detailed information. Here’s what I found hovering over Benicia (click the image to enlarge).
In Benicia, zip code 94510, we have a vaccination rate among the 24,819 of us who are 12 years and older… of 80%!
You can explore the map to see your city’s zip code. But I’ll save you a trip – here are the Solano cities/zips I was able to find AS OF TODAY. Note that these numbers are all higher than the LA Times numbers above. I suspect that is because this data calculates a percentage based on residents 12+ while the LA Times most likely uses total population.
Solano County zip code
12+ Population
Share of population vaccinated
Benicia 94510
24,819
80%
Vallejo 94589
26,451
74%
Vallejo 94590
31,869
70%
Vallejo 94591
48,466
71%
Vallejo / Mare Island 94592
830
86%
Vallejo all zips
107,616
75%
Suisun City 94585
24,994
62%
Green Valley/Ffield 94534
33,547
80%
Fairfield 94533
62,858
61%
Travis AFB 94535
2,546
18%
Vacaville 95687
59,036
52%
Vacaville 95688
31,725
64%
Elmira 95625
74
100%
Dixon 95620
18,303
64%
Rio Vista 94571
10,004
71%
Something is surely off about the Travis numbers. Is the Air Base not reporting?
Interesting that EVERYONE in Elmira is vaccinated!
[Editor: Among California counties, Solano currently ranks near average in percent vaccinated (55.6%), and well above average in 7-day cases per 100K residents (15.6). See chart below. -R.S.]
COVID spreading fast in well-vaccinated California counties
Cases falling in counties with below-average vaccination
As the United States continues on a path to near pre-pandemic normalcy, experts remain concerned over low vaccination rates and the spread of variants, which could potentially exacerbate a pandemic that has upended life for more than a year and inflicted a damaging toll on Americans and the world. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
California and its big coastal cities have embraced vaccines to beat back the COVID-19 pandemic. But a Bay Area News Group analysis shows not only are cases rising fast in much of the Golden State, they are soaring in many urban counties that boast high vaccination rates.
Five California counties have both a higher percentage of their eligible residents fully vaccinated and a higher average daily case rate than the statewide average: Los Angeles, San Diego, Alameda, Contra Costa and San Francisco. The five counties with falling case rates — Modoc, Glenn, Lassen, Del Norte, San Benito — have below-average vaccination rates.
Detail from chart, hovering over “Solano”. Solano County residents 12+ vaccinated = 54.65%; 7-day average of daily cases per 100,000 residents = 15.56. (See Times-Herald interactive image for detailed data on all counties).
That doesn’t mean the vaccines don’t work — rates for infection and hospitalization remain vastly higher among the unvaccinated. So what’s going on? Experts point to two things: the extraordinary ease with which the virus’ now-dominant delta strain spreads, and the fact that no vaccine offers impenetrable protection.
“I am not so surprised that transmission rates are not neatly tracking immunization rates,” said Dr. Stephen Luby, a medical professor specializing in infectious diseases at Stanford University.
“There are a number of issues that contribute to transmission,” Luby said. “In high density urban settings, for example, even with a higher level of vaccine coverage, there can still be a lot of exposure to unvaccinated folks and potentially to folks who are vaccinated but are asymptomatically shedding the delta variant.”
The soaring case rates spurred action and pleas this past week from public health officials in the Bay Area and politicians in some of the most vaccine-resistant parts of the country. Health officials in Santa Clara, San Francisco and Contra Costa counties urged employers to require vaccinations for all workers. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell implored the unvaccinated to get their shots and ignore “demonstrably bad advice,” while the Republican governor of Alabama — the least-vaccinated state in the country — said “it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks” for the virus’s continued surge.
The delta variant, which devastated India in the spring, is highly contagious and has since spread globally and throughout the U.S. and California where it accounted for 82.8% of sequenced viral specimens as of Wednesday, up from 48.8% a month earlier.
There have been mixed reports about the vaccines’ effectiveness against the variant, most of which indicate they still offer broad protection, and case rates show the fully vaccinated remain well protected.
The California Department of Public Health reported Friday that between January 1 and July 14, 99% of the state’s cumulative cases have been among unvaccinated people. For the week of July 7-14, the average daily case rate per 100,000 among unvaccinated Californians was 13 while the rate for the vaccinated was 2, the CDPH said.
A similar picture emerges locally. In Contra Costa County, which reports case rates by vaccination status, the average rate per 100,000 among the unvaccinated was 27.8 on July 16 — six times the 4.5 rate reported in the vaccinated population. In Sonoma County, the rate was 15.1 among the unvaccinated, and 3.7 for the vaccinated.
But although the vaccines do a good job bolstering the body’s ability to fight infection, they aren’t impenetrable shields. Because vaccinated people are being exposed to higher levels of a more contagious variant circulating in densely populated urban areas, their chances for contracting one of the few vaccine “breakthrough” infections are greater.
“The best, most waterproof raincoat is protective, but not when it’s storming outside or you’re in the middle of a hurricane,” said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, a professor of epidemiology at UC San Francisco.
She and Luby added that some vaccinated people may be spreading the virus without knowing they have it while their bodies fight it off.
And since California’s June 15 reopening, when the state retired its face mask mandate and color-coded system of pandemic restrictions based on case rates, people have been venturing out more without masks to stores, restaurants and events that no longer have pandemic crowd limits. Although many people still use masks in places like the Bay Area, that can only do so much.
“It’s definitely depressing to see how quickly things turned,” Bibbins-Domingo said. “But the threat of the virus has always been there. Delta is a highly transmissible variant, something we have to respect. Even with some of the masking, we’re moving around a lot, we’re going along with our usual patterns of behavior. Put those together and you can quickly see, even though we’re wearing masks, we have vaccination, there’s no margin for error any more.”
While vaccination levels are relatively high in California and the big cities where the virus is spreading, there still are many who haven’t had or can’t get the shots.
According to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, California’s 61.1% vaccination rate of those 12 and older compares favorably to the 55.3% in Florida and 53% in Texas, and isn’t far behind New York’s 65.4%. But many, including kids under 12 and people with medical issues, can’t get the shots. Just over half California’s nearly 40 million people — 52.1% — are fully immunized.
“Once you put in the full population denominator, it’s not as high as we think,” Bibbins-Domingo said.
The rapidly worsening pandemic picture — coming at a time when many hoped the virus would be a fading memory — has led many health experts to call on federal and state authorities to reverse course and impose more face mask requirements and restrictions.
Both the CDC and California Department of Public Health have maintained that the answer remains simply getting more people vaccinated. But resistance among some people will be hard to overcome.
For now, many local health officials have been stepping in, urging people to resume wearing masks indoors, where the virus spreads more easily, regardless of vaccination, and employers to require that their workers get the shots. Some businesses, including San Francisco bar owners, are considering requiring their customers provide proof of vaccination, fearing a return of the pandemic restrictions that closed them down entirely.
Health experts like Bibbins-Domingo support all of that, and sympathize with the messaging dilemma facing public health officials.
“The challenge in public health communication is we ultimately do want more people to be vaccinated,” Bibbins-Domingo said. “And the concern is communicating that we also need to wear a mask right now will then dilute the message that we need to be vaccinated. The challenge is that both things are true.”
Solano County reported 304 new COVID cases since Wednesday’s report, 152 per day over the 2 days! We’ve not seen a daily increase this high since Feb. 5, 2021.
TREND: Cases-per-day dramatically up in July
Cases-per-day have trended gradually downward in recent months, but are now rising sharply:
Solano’s 647ACTIVE cases is dramatically up from Wednesday’s 451, and higher than anything since February 11, 2021. Active cases have risen alarmingly in just two weeks, up from 289 cases on July 12.
Our percent positivity rate was up alarmingly today from a very high 12.2% on Wednesday to a shocking 14.9% today, the County’s highest rate since January 29, 2021. We would be decidedly back in the PURPLE TIER with rates this high. ICU Beds Available rose by 4% today to 50%. The County reported more ventilators available today, up from 77 to 80.
Solano County reported no new deathstoday. The County total is now 245 deaths since the pandemic began.
SUMMER SURGE – Masks and Social Distancing
COVID is clearly circulating again and surging in Solano County! Some California counties are returning to mandatory masks for all in crowded places. In the Bay Area, Solano County is the only holdout against even RECOMMENDING masks in public indoors spaces. My personal plan is to mask indoors in public even though I’m vaccinated, and I’d recommend it for you, too. This thing ain’t over yet!
Hospitalizations on Friday, July 23:
CURRENT hospitalizations remained steady today at 33 persons CURRENTLY hospitalized with COVID. However, in today’s “Hospitalizations by Age Group” chart, the County reported 1 new hospitalization, a Black / African American person age 50-64. These charts are only updated “occasionally” according to our Public Health officer, Dr. Bela Matyas. The County updates the intake/discharge total of CURRENTLY hospitalized cases with every report, but never reports on the cumulative total of hospitalized COVID patients over the course of the pandemic. That total must be independently discovered in the County’s occasional update on the Hospitalizations by Age Group chart. As mentioned, that chart was updated today and so I can now report a new total of 1,309 persons hospitalized since the beginning of the outbreak, in the following age groups:
Age Group
Hospitalizations
% of Total
0-17
27
2%
18-49
327
25%
50-64
342
26%
65+
613
47%
TOTAL
1,309
100%
Hospitalizations are also recorded on the County’s demographic chart labeled “Hospitalizations by Race / Ethnicity.” The chart was updated today, adding a Black / African American person. Here are the current numbers. Interestingly, the total doesn’t square with totals by age groups.
Race / Ethnicity
Hospitalizations
% of Total
Asians
184
15%
Black / African American
200
16%
Hispanic / Latinx
327
27%
White
406
34%
Multirace / Others
86
7%
TOTAL
1,203
99%
Cases by City on Friday, July 23:
Beniciaadded 14 new cases today, a total of 1,084 cases since the outbreak began, 3.9% of its population of 27,570.
Dixon added 14 new case today, total of 1,990 cases, 10.1% of its population of 19,794.
Fairfield added 74 new cases today, total of 9,486 cases, 8.1% of its population of 117,149.
Rio Vista added 4 new cases today, total of 417 cases, 4.4% of its population of 9,416.
Suisun Cityadded 30 new cases today, total of 2,449 cases, 8.3% of its population of 29,447.
Vacaville added 82 new cases today, a total of 9,259 cases, 9.4% its of population of 98,807.
Vallejoadded 89 new cases today, a total of 10,400 cases, 8.7% of its population of 119,544.
Unincorporated areas added 1 new case today, a total of 108 cases (population figures not available).
COMPARE: From the most recent report on Solano County’s COVID Dashboard, Wednesday, July 21:
The data on this page is from today’s and the previous Solano County COVID-19 Dashboard. The Dashboard is full of much more information and updated weekdays 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.
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