San Diego County public health officials reported 263 new coronavirus infections and six more deaths Wednesday, a day after narrowly avoiding a purple-tier ranking.
“Yesterday we dodged a bullet. We could not have gotten any closer without tripping into the purple tier,” Supervisor Nathan Fletcher said at a press briefing. “But we don’t want to live or die on the tiers by how many tests we’ve done.”
On Tuesday, thanks to an adjustment for extensive testing, the California Department of Public Health ranked the county at 7.0 daily cases per 100,000 population — the top end of the red tier indicating substantial, but not widespread, infection.
If the county had ranked 7.1 or higher on Tuesday, and remained in the widespread purple category a week later, then indoor activities at restaurants, movie theaters, gyms and a number of other locations would have to stop.
On Wednesday the county reported 10,449 tests with a positive rate of 2.5%, causing the 14-day rolling average of positive cases to tick down to 2.8%.
Six new community outbreaks were reported Wednesday, two in businesses, three in restaurants or bars, and one in a healthcare setting. In the past seven days, 32 community outbreaks were confirmed.
The latest victims of COVID-19 were four men and two women who ranged in age from their mid-50s to late 90s. All had underlying medical conditions.
Since the first local case in March, there have been 1,322,428 tests performed in San Diego County, resulting in 53,263 cases and 863 deaths.
