Health officer says data lag contributing to spike in COVID numbers
A recent spike in Tuolumne County’s COVID-19 numbers — four new deaths on Monday, a 40% increase in the case rate from Friday to Monday, and the highest number of hospitalizations at one time since the end of August — may be due in part to data lag, the county health officer said Tuesday.
Even though more than one-third of the county’s total COVID-19 deaths have occurred in just the past three months, County Health Officer Dr. Eric Sergienko says the episode dates for individual cases show the trend of infections is indeed moving in the right direction with declining case numbers.
“New cases, they are slowly going down,” Sergienko said. “The short answer is we are moving in the right direction. Episode dates on the dashboard show we are declining.”
The episode date is “the earliest available date based on symptom onset, test sample collection date, or lab result date” for each new case, according to a terminology page on the county Public Health Department’s COVID-19 Information online dashboard.
“We’re delayed, anywhere from days to weeks,” Sergienko said. “Overall for the population, we’re on the decline. I wouldn’t even look at Monday’s data because a lot of it’s catchup. It’s just a snapshot, and it includes older data.”
Asked about how 44 out of the county’s 117 coronavirus deaths have occurred since Aug. 1, and how that translates locally to a decline in the pandemic, Sergienko emphasized that most of the continuing new cases and deaths involve unvaccinated individuals.
“The delta surge we saw started in the middle of July,” he said. “Look at the people who are not vaccinated. They are the majority of people being hospitalized and dying.”
As of Monday, only three of Tuolumne County’s 117 deaths due to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic have been people who were fully vaccinated. About 90% of hospitalizations have also consistently been unvaccinated people over the past three months since the more contagious delta variant emerged locally.
It was announced Monday that four more people in the county had died of COVID-19, all of whom were unvaccinated.
The deceased people were identified as a woman in her 60s, a man in his 70s, and two women in their 90s, said Kristina Herrera, programs supervisors for the county Public Health Department, in a phone interview Monday afternoon.
One of the four whose deaths were announced Monday was a resident of a local care facility, Herrera said.
Michelle Jachetta, public health director for the county, said last week that her department was helping two local care facilities to contain and mitigate coronavirus outbreaks at each. She would not disclose the names of the facilities, however.
Herrera said on Monday she could
not specify whether any of the four deaths counted Monday occurred at either of the two facilities where outbreaks were occurring last week.
No other information was disclosed about the four new COVID-19 deaths announced Monday, including where and when they died.
The county also tallied 89 new cases from Saturday to Monday, with active cases increasing to more than 260 and hospitalizations to 17. That was the highest number of hospitalized patients at one time the county Public Health Department has reported since there were 20 on Aug. 31.
The county's case rate also climbed to 54.1 per 100,000 residents, up from 38.5 on Friday.
Out of the county's 89 new cases on Monday, 72 individuals were not vaccinated against COVID-19.
New cases on Monday were identified as two girls and nine boys under age 12; two girls and five boys between 12 and 17; three women and eight men between 18 and 29; six women and five men in their 30s; five women and seven men in their 40s; eight women and three men in their 50s; five women and five men in their 60s; six women and three men in their 70s; two women and two men in their 80s; and one woman and two men age 90 or older.