COVID-19: ‘We’re not out of the woods yet,’ Dr. Coren warns

While the summer surge still seems to be receding, Mendocino County Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren said there was an uptick in the daily rate of new COVID-19 cases Friday.

“Unfortunately, I’m also seeing an increased rate of 15 cases per day (up from 13), and we’ll have to follow that to see if that is significant,” Coren said during his latest public update Oct. 22.

Also of concern is an increase in the number of cases being identified in children between the ages of 5 and 11,” which Coren said “is especially concerning to me because there is a new variant in the United Kingdom they’re calling Delta-Plus, that seems to be driven by an increase in the rate in children.” However, he added that California has reportedly “not seen this variant yet.”

Coren also pointed to the latest hospitalization rates as troubling him, since that number was higher than it was last October

before the 2020 winter surge, and not as low as they were even in May of this year before the 2021 summer surge. “So we’re not out of the woods yet,” he said.

Later Friday afternoon, county officials reported 19 new cases of COVID-19, and that 11 people were hospitalized in the county, two of whom were in the

Intensive Care Unit.

As for vaccines, Coren said that 80-percent of Mendocino County residents eligible to be vaccinated have had at least one shot, with 71.4 percent of those being fully vaccinated.

By Nov. 1, Coren said that bars and restaurants serving food will be required to post signs alerting patrons to their vaccination policies: green signs mean all employees are vaccinated or tested, and patrons eating inside need to be vaccinated; yellow signs mean that employees are vaccinated or tested, but patrons are not asked to be vaccinated; red signs mean that neither employees nor patrons are vaccinated.