Two COVID deaths reported as Santa Cruz stays in orange tier
Dashboard reflects new congregate living facility outbreak
SANTA CRUZ >> As the county of Santa Cruz remained in the orange tier Tuesday, it recorded no new cases but two new deaths in the COVID-19 data dashboard.
According to side-by-side screenshots of the dashboard from Monday and Tuesday, both of the deceased were white men. One of the dead had a severe health condition that contributed to his death while the other did not; one man was in his 70s while the other was in his 80s.
One man was not a resident of a congregate living facility. The other was a resident at La Posada Retirement Community in Santa Cruz. This is the facility’s first recorded COVID-19 death.
According to both the California Department of Public Health which licenses skilled nursing facilities and the California Department of Social Services which licenses residential care facilities, just one case of the virus constitutes as an outbreak. Therefore, La Posada is experiencing its first outbreak. It does not, however, show up on the CDSS data chart on COVID-19
outbreaks at its facility. La Posada did not respond to a request for comment prior to the Sentinel’s print deadline.
Questioning state metrics
No new cases were logged Tuesday, with just six new cases being reported countywide during the last seven-day window after the “data cleanup” the county’s epidemiological team performed last week. This is why on this Tier Tuesday confusion arose for Santa Cruz health officials when the state reported a higher adjusted case rate than the previous week. From March 24 to March 30, the county logged 69 new cases into its dashboard. Additionally, there were 23 more active COVID-19 cases than there are to date.
“I have asked about this because overall active cases are down, so this doesn’t make sense to me,” county spokesman Jason Hoppin said in a text.
Regardless, the county could still transition into the yellow tier by the end of April. The state mandates that a county must remain in a tier for three weeks and have metrics meeting the tier it seeks to move to for two weeks prior to the drop in severity. The county has been in orange for the week of March 30 and the week of April 6; if the metrics remain low during the
week of April 13 the county can move to the yellow tier on April 20 (effective April 21 at 12:01 a.m.).
Because the state has vaccinated 4 million individuals in the lowest Healthy Places Index quartile, the metrics have been eased for the red, orange and yellow tiers. The county’s adjusted case rate, previously two daily new cases per 100,000 residents but this week 3.4 daily new cases per 100,000 residents, needs to drop to less than two daily new cases for the county to move to the yellow tier; the testing positivity rate and health equity quartile positivity rate are already in yellow tier territory.
As counties across the state, such as San Diego, progressed into a less severe tier, the CDPH announced Tuesday morning that it plans to remove COVID-19 restrictions on businesses, gatherings and recreational activities in June. A tweet from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office credited the combination of progress made in the COVID-19 vaccination rollout and the mitigation of virus spread statewide for the execution of the move approximately
two months out.
“…We’re setting our eyes on June 15th to fully reopen our economy,” his office said in the social media post.
Mask mandates will remain, Newsom and state health officials emphasized. He called it a “common-sense measure.”
“Mask up & get vaxed, CA,” Newsom wrote.
Locally, Santa Cruz County celebrated its own progress on Twitter. Of the more than 20 million vaccinations across the state, more than 168,000 had gone into the arms of eligible county residents.