Daily new case average up this week from last

Bi-county Health Officer Dr. Phuong Luu said the Yuba-sutter region still has a lot of work to do to “re-flatten the curve” after the area saw the average number of daily new cases rise slightly this week.

Luu said Yuba-sutter averaged about 40 new cases each day this week, up from last week.

“The state metrics require the YubaSutter region to hold steady at around 13 cases or fewer each day over a two

week period in order to be taken off the monitoring list,” Luu said.

“If we want to have kids back for in-person schooling, we need to do better.”

Almost 40 percent of the confirmed cases in Yuba-sutter have been from people who are asymptomatic, according to the online dashboard.

“Our dashboard is showing a significant number of asymptomatic cases as a direct result of positive cases coming out of large gatherings, which results in the need to recommend testing all close contacts identified from those gatherings,” Luu said.

About half of the positive cases are coming from people who have attended a large gathering of friends or family without taking precautions. Luu said in each of those cases up to 40 or more people have had to be tested for possible exposure.

“It is important to note that a portion of those who initially had no symptoms later began to show symptoms,” Luu said. Each time that happens, the dashboard is adjusted by moving those counts over to the ‘symptomatic’ column. It’s not uncommon for each day’s tally of asymptomatic cases to include people who were tested before they began showing symptoms.

On Friday, 19 new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in Yuba-sutter, bringing the total number of cases to 1,239. Thirtyfive people recovered and 18 remained hospitalized as of late Friday. After three deaths this week, a total of 10 people in the region have died from COVID-19.

To access the online dashboard that updates the local numbers at the end of each day, visit bepreparedsutter.org or bepreparedyuba.org.