Despite virus spike, county not under scrutiny

Local case counts don’t exceed threshold for rolling back reopening

Humboldt County’s recent spike in COVID-19 cases isn’t enough to trigger a rolling back of the economy just yet, but the county could be added to a list of counties the state is monitoring if case counts continue to increase.

Nineteen counties, such as Orange County and Contra Costa County, are currently being monitored by the state because of elevated disease transmission, increasing hospitalizations and/ or limited hospital capacity because of COVID-19. The state has required seven of those counties to close their bars and recommended another eight do the same, Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a news conference Monday.

“We’re actively monitoring all 58 counties in the state of California, but we’re now targeting our monitoring in 19 counties,” Newsom said.

Bars and wineries were allowed to begin reopening earlier this month, and only counties that have been on the county’s monitoring list for over two weeks without seeing improvement were mandated to have their bars closed, Newsom said.

These counties crossed certain thresholds of concern set by the state, such as having a COVID-19 positivity rate over 8% for a week and a 14-day case rate over 25 per 100,000 people. A case rate in excess of 100 per 100,000 people for a two-week period by itself would also get a county flagged for elevated disease transmission.

Humboldt County hasn’t yet reached those thresholds, according to the state website, but it’s getting close. Humboldt County currently has a confirmed COVID-19 case rate of 98 per 100,000 people, though it is still lower than the state’s rate of 540 per 100,000 people and the country’s rate of 778 per 100,000 people, according to the county’s

COVID-19 dashboard as of 3 p.m. Tuesday.

The county’s positivity rate was 4% over the past week and it experienced a 12.7% increase in cases from the previous week, according to the dashboard as of 3 p.m. Tuesday.

For comparison, Imperial County had a case rate of 696.1 per 100,000 people and a 22.5% positivity rate while Orange County had a case rate of 108.9 per 100,000 people and a 9.2% positivity rate, according to data from the state Department of Public Health.

The numbers represent something different for each county, Newsom said.

“You may see increases in certain counties may be primarily because of spread that exists, for example, in a state prison,” Newsom said. ” … Others have more generic community spread, just people mixing and not in every case wearing face coverings and not practicing the social distancing.”

Other criteria include a 10% or more increase in the average number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients, having less than 20% of staffed intensive care unit beds available or less than 25% of ventilators available, according to the state Department of Public Health website.

Humboldt County has 57 intensive care unit beds and 46 ventilators, according to the county’s attestation to the state to reopen.