COUNTY REPORTS 17 ADDITIONAL COMMUNITY OUTBREAKS

As testing continued at Point Loma Nazarene University on Thursday, San Diego County logged 17 additional community coronavirus outbreaks.

It is the second time in a week that officials announced a significant total, indicating that the amount of virus-spreading activity in public places may be on the rise.

According to the county’s daily COVID-19 report, 10 of the outbreaks were associated with local businesses, three were in restaurant/bar settings, two were in faith-based locations, one was associated with food processing and one more was in a restaurant.

Per usual, the county health department did not mention any of the locations by name.

The daily case count, though, trended lower with just 143 new positive cases announced, maintaining the local 14-day average test positivity rate at 3 percent, roughly where it has stayed for

more than one week. Three additional COVID-related deaths brought the regional total to 847. They included one woman and two men, all older than 70 with other underlying medical conditions.

Thursday was the deadline for the county health department to send a report to the California Department of Public Health outlining how it intends to reduce coronavirus activity rates in areas with the lowest “health equity” scores. A copy of the document was not available as afternoon turned to evening; a spokesperson said in an email the document would not be ready to be sent to Sacramento until later in the evening. The county planned to post the document on its website for public review today.

It was not clear just how much the case totals at Point Loma Nazarene University changed Thursday. On Wednesday, the picturesque private campus reported that a dozen of its students had tested positive for coronavirus infections, bringing the total number of active cases to 19, including five who live off campus. There were 66 students under quarantine or isolation, and the university reported that it was awaiting the results of 98 additional tests.

Though a spokesperson said that the campus would release updated numbers Thursday evening, no refresh had appeared on PLNU’s COVID tracking page as of 7 p.m.

After being notified of the surge in cases Wednesday, the county health department sent its own experts to the campus Thursday to assist with the testing operation, which had nursing students collecting samples with nasal swabs until the early evening.