Local officials say Tuolumne County’s COVID cases could continue rising for next 6 weeks

Cases of COVID-19 increased in Tuolumne County this past week, with the county health officer describing “high community transmission” and an outbreak among sixthgraders and staff at a local school prompting closure of two classrooms, while Calaveras County counted its 125th death attributed to COVID-19 earlier this week.

“Our cases have gone up quite a bit this week, with more hospitalizations as well,” Dr. Kimberly Freeman, the county health officer, said Friday morning in a press briefing. “The cases have been going up for about the last seven weeks. According to modeling, we’re going to continue going up if we follow the New York trajectory. If we follow the same model, we’ll be on our way for the next six weeks.”

Freeman was referring to the COVID-19 omicron subvariant BA.2.12.1 that has become a dominant version of coronavirus since May 21, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Tuolumne County deaths attributed to COVID-19 remained at 183 as of Friday morning. Michelle Jachetta, the county Public Health director, said another death could be counted later Friday. The 125th COVID-19 death in Calaveras County, a woman in her 60s, was announced earlier this week. No other information about her death was disclosed.

There was no new state guidance for COVID-19 restrictions, Freeman said, with the exception of a new definition for “close contact.” The change is that close contact is now defined as someone sharing the same indoor airspace for a cumulative total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period during a laboratoryconfirmed or clinically diagnosed infected person’s infectious period, according to the state Department of Public Health.

State guidance previously defined close contact as being within six feet of an infected person for 15 minutes over 24 hours.

“This is not a change in the disease,” Freeman said. “It should have been this way all along. It should have been considered aerosol all along. It was always an aerosol disease.”

People can be exposed to the newer variants of COVID-19 more quickly than two years ago when the pandemic first began in March 2020, Freeman said.

Continued public health guidance for preventing the spread of COVID-19 includes recommendations for maintaining physical distance from others in public; wearing masks indoors; hands hygiene and cough etiquette; avoid touching your face; and getting vaccinated and getting booster shots, Jachetta said, referring to these multiple precautions as a “Swiss cheese” model of layered protections intended to eliminate possible holes in individual layers.

Freeman said the COVID-19 school outbreak this week was confined to one school. Since the pandemic began, county Public Health has largely refrained from identifying individual schools where outbreaks have occurred.

“We had one school with a couple of classrooms closed this week due to outbreak,” Freeman said. “We have summer school going into session, so we’re meeting frequently with the school superintendents to ensure safety. It’s important to know there’s high community transmission.”

Half of the sixth grade at the school tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday, more than 20 positive cases, Freeman said. That classroom was shut down that day. By Wednesday, that same sixth grade class had 25% of the class with infections. There were some positive test results and/or infections among staff at the same school, Freeman said.

Cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Tuolumne County “still seem to be mild,” Freeman said. “The spike we’ve been seeing has been going up for seven weeks now. We don’t really see a lot of increased hospitalizations, though we did have at least one person in the ICU (intensive care unit at Adventist Health Sonora) this week. There are still people getting sick, some very sick. Most people have very mild symptoms.”

Some people who are infected with COVID-19 right now think they are just suffering from allergies, they are not getting tested for COVID-19, so they don’t know they have it and they are out there spreading it, Freeman said.

Tuolumne County had a total of 149 new cases of COVID-19, including six inmate cases at Sierra Conservation Center state prison outside Jamestown, for the week that ended June 10, Jachetta said. That’s up from last week, when there were 122 new cases of coronavirus in Tuolumne County for the week ending June, including two inmate cases at the SCC state prison.

As of Friday afternoon, there were 121 confirmed active cases of coronavirus in the county, with 12 individuals with COVID-19 hospitalized during the past week. Hospitalization counts include all patients diagnosed with COVID-19 during their stay.

New community cases in Tuolumne County were identified by county Public Health as 10 girls, 11 boys, and one other under age 12; five girls and seven boys between 12 and 17; nine women and two men between 18 and 29; 15 women and seven men in their 30s; nine women and four men in their 40s; 12 women and 10 men in their 50s; 15 women and eight men in their 60s; four women and six men in their 70s; nine women and four men in their 80s; and one man age 90 or older.

“We strongly recommend the public to continue practicing protective measures including wearing a mask in indoor public spaces, staying up-to-date on vaccination, washing hands, physical distancing, and staying home when feeling unwell,” Jachetta said Friday.

Tuolumne County remained in a medium community level and high transmission level this week, according to federal CDC guidelines information distributed by Jachetta. Community level is determined by the higher of the new hospital admissions and inpatient beds metrics, based on the current level of new cases per 100,000 population in the past seven days. Community transmission is determined as new cases per 100,00 population in the past seven days.

The COVID-19 testing site at Mother Lode Fairgrounds, set up by the state and run by Optum ServeLHI, has experienced delays in launching test-totreat operations, Jachetta said last week. The site is expected to launch testto-treat Monday, June 13. People can speak with their healthcare providers if individuals have tested positive for COVID-19, to determine if therapeutics are appropriate and prescribable.

The testing site will be closed June 20 and reopen June 21 and June 22, Jachetta said. The site will also be closed June 29 to July 4 for the Mother Lode Fair and Independence Day. The site will reopen July 5 and July 6.

Freeman and Jachetta brought up another public health issue unrelated to COVID-19. There is a nationwide infant formula shortage that is impacting some families’ ability to get formula, Jachetta said. More information from state Public Health is available online at https:// bit.ly/3hakv90. Families receiving WIC assistance — the federal assistance program for healthcare and nutrition of low-income women, infants, and children up to age 5 — can call the Tuolumne County WIC office at (209) 533-7431.