County marks 4 deaths in 4 days

Monthly average of Covid deaths triples in August

With four deaths in four days this week, Mendocino County has already tripled its monthly average of Covid-19 deaths in August.

“We had a 43-year-old die last night,” said Dr. Drew Colfax, who works in the emergency room at Adventist Health Ukiah Valley. “It’s tragic.”

The 61st death from Covid-19 in Mendocino County was described by county health officials as a 43-year-old Ukiah man who had not been vaccinated. In the three days prior to his death, three more people died: a 52-year-old unvaccinated man, an 88-year

old Covelo woman and a 41-year-old unvaccinated woman, the youngest fatality yet in the county.

A correction: When first reporting the death of the 88-year-old Covelo woman, county health officials described her as not having been vaccinated, but family members reported she had been vaccinated at the clinic in Round Valley. When asked Friday about her vaccination status, Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren said that his office had initially incorrectly reported that she had not been vaccinated, but that it had since been verified that she was in fact vaccinated.

Colfax said the recent deaths among younger patients can in part be attributed to the fact that more of the older population has now been vaccinated, as the “latest surge is definitely affecting mostly the unvaccinated.” However, he said it could also be attributed to the fact that the “Delta variant may be more deadly,” though there was not yet enough data to prove that.

With 61 deaths in the past 18 months, Mendocino County has averaged about three deaths per month since March of 2020. As of Aug. 26, nine county residents have died from Covid-19 this month, triple the average so far.

And while there are signs that the latest surge is waning, Colfax expects the next couple of weeks to be very difficult, with stressed healthcare workers trying to treat critical patients when they “don’t have hospital beds, we don’t have ICU beds, and we don’t have anywhere to transfer them.”

As to what might convince people to get vaccinated and help alleviate the pressure on local hospitals, Colfax said, “I don’t think fear will convince them. Now we are hoping to appeal to their better natures, to convince them to do it for their community, for their families, for their children. Because children can get Covid, and if they’re under 12, they can’t get vaccinated.”