Cases increase by 32 on Wednesday
“We are not going in the right direction,” said Bi-county Public Health Officer Dr. Phuong Luu about the increase in positive COVID-19 cases within the Yuba-sutter area in the last 14 days.
Luu said that the weekly metric calculation shows that Sutter County rose to 315 new cases per 100,000 residents and Yuba County rose to 338 new cases this week.
That is a rise of 29 new cases in Sutter County and 50 new cases in Yuba County since last week.
“It’s not up to me, it’s not up to our Public Health staff. It’s really up to each of you, to make sure that you avoid all those social gatherings, that you adhere to those tenets that we keep saying over and over: social distancing, wearing masks when you cannot maintain social distancing, and being very, very vigilant about the presence of any symptoms concerning for COVID-19, and if you do have it, to immediately isolate yourself at home,” said Luu.
Although the number of positive cases continues to rise in the bi-county area, Luu said there is some good news this week with confirmation from the California Testing Task Force and Optumserve that lab turnaround time has improved dramatically.
“Now most of the time, you can get an appointment within the same day or the next day, and the lab turnaround time for the results is around three to five days,” said Luu. “It used to be even up to seven to ten days but now it’s been significantly shortened.
So, if you have symptoms, immediately isolate yourself at home and go and get tested.”
Luu said that making the decision to get tested goes hand-in-hand with making the decision to isolate.
“If you have been worried enough to get a COVID-19 test, then you should take personal responsibility to isolate at home, stay in a separate bedroom and bathroom, do not share meals with your household members and wear a facial covering if you have to interact with your household members,” said Luu. “Those are the best ways so that you do not inadvertently infect your household members.”
According to Luu, the statewide data glitch that was reported earlier this month was fixed over the weekend and the YubaSutter area did see some older test results trickle in as expected, but those cases did not contribute significantly to the case count.
“We had about 20 percent or around 12 for Sunday, around 13 for Monday, and just about five for Tuesday due to the data glitch,” said Luu. “This is actually what we actually knew all along, that we have such a robust reporting mechanism from our lone hospital Adventist-rideout, from our medical clinics and medical providers, so we don’t have to rely solely on the ELR-TO-CALREDIE system for that.”
The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the Yuba-sutter area increased by 32 on Wednesday, bringing the total to 1,729 cases.
Thirty residents were hospitalized as of Wednesday evening and, of those, eight were in the Intensive Care Unit.
Eleven local residents have died due to the virus and 924 people recovered from the virus. A total of 17,952 residents have been tested to date, according to the online dashboard.