Unvaccinated hospitalizations in Tuolumne County again outnumber the vaccinated
Unvaccinated people once again accounted for the most active hospitalizations from COVID-19 in Tuolumne County as of Friday, following a threeday stretch where they were either outnumbered or equal to those who were vaccinated.
The county had 10 people hospitalized because of the deadly virus as of Friday, with seven of them unvaccinated. There were also 16 new cases confirmed the same day, of which 14 were reportedly unvaccinated people.
More vaccinated people were hospitalized for COVID-19 in the county than unvaccinated people for the first time ever on Tuesday, Nov. 30, when there were six vaccinated and five unvaccinated in the hospital.
Hospitalizations evened out at five vaccinated and five unvaccinated on Wednesday, followed by five vaccinated and four unvaccinated on Thursday.
When asked during a news briefing on Friday about the disparities between vaccinated and unvaccinated hospitalizations over the past week, interim County Health Officer Dr. Eric Sergienko said that he didn’t believe looking at a “snapshot of time” for the county’s relatively small population of about 55,000 as a sign of a larger trend was a “good way to go about it.”
Sergienko pointed back to a graphic he shared with The Union Democrat earlier this week that showed people who weren’t fully vaccinated accounted for about 83% of new COVID-19 cases from June 1 through Nov. 22 in an eight-county region that includes Tuolumne, Calaveras, Mariposa, Madera, Merced, Kings, Mono, and Fresno.
The percentage of hospitalizations that were unvaccinated people over the same period of time in the region was close to the same as that of new cases, Sergienko said, though he didn’t have a graphic with exact numbers to illustrate that on Friday.
New cases confirmed on Friday were identified by the county Public Health Department as one girl younger than 12, two girls between the ages of 12 and 17, a man 18 to 29 years old, two women and a man in their 30s, a man in his 40s, a woman in her 50s, a woman and two men in their 60s, a woman and two men in their 70s, and a woman in her 80s.
There were 94 active cases in the county on Friday, with the daily case rate averaged over two weeks remaining the same as the day before at 19 per 100,000 residents.
Calaveras County had 13 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed on Friday, though it does not publicly disclose the vaccination status of new cases or deaths.
Tuolumne County’s death toll since the pandemic began early last year was at 144 and Calaveras County’s at 89 as of Friday.
Nearly half of Tuolumne County’s COVID-19 deaths have occurred since Aug. 1, when the more contagious delta variant became the dominant strain locally and vaccines that have proven themselves to be effective at preventing serious illness were widely available.
Calaveras County has confirmed a total of 4,389 cases since the pandemic began early last year, while Tuolumne County has confirmed 7,908. Tuolumne County’s total also included 1,621 state prison inmates at Sierra Conservation Center in Jamestown.