San Diego County public health officials said Monday the numbers are “not headed in the right direction” as they reported 302 new cases of coronavirus, though no deaths.
It was the second day in a row that the number of new cases exceeded 300.
The county received 5,831 tests in the past day, for a positive rate of 5.2%. That was less than the previous day’s 7.0%, but sill well over the 14-day rolling average of 2.9%.
In addition, officials reported that the number of community outbreaks in the past week increased to 10, well above the “trigger” level of seven outbreaks in a week.
“These are concerning numbers,” said Supervisor Nathan Fletcher a a media briefing. “The number of cases, the number of outbreaks, the percentage of positives are not headed in the right direction.”
However, the county is not yet seeing an increase in hospitalizations or utilization of intensive-care units, though Fletcher said those are lagging indicators of the pandemic.
Dr. Wilma Wooten, the county’s public health officer, said delays in the delivery of test results to the county may account for some of the recent increase, but she said the numbers clearly show the effect of widespread re-opening of local businesses.
“We expected that we would see more cases with the reopening,” said Wooten. “As we reopened, people are interacting more with each other and gathering in larger groups.”
Officials said residents aged 20 to 29 now account for the largest percentage of cases, and Wooten noted that such residents have “more of a tendency to feel invincible” with respect to the disease.
Since the first local case in March, there have been 280,773 tests administered, resulting in 11,096 positive cases and 338 deaths.
Statewide there have been 3,411,686 tests, 178,054 positive cases and 5,515 deaths.
