San Diego County public health officials reported a record 332 new cases of coronavirus on Wednesday and six more deaths from the disease.
The county recorded 6,981 tests over the past day, for a positive rate of 4.8%, causing the 14-day rolling average of tick up to 3.1%.
“We did a great job in flattening the curve,” said Supervisor Nathan Fletcher at a media briefing. “As we go though the re-opening process, it is natural that we will see an increase in spread. What we want to avoid is exponential growth.”
He implored San Diegans to wear masks, wash hands, adhere to temperature checks and practice social distancing.
“We are clearly seeing an uptick, both in cases and percentage of positives,”said Fletcher. “We want to try to level that off.”
Cases spiked over 5% in the reports on Sunday and Monday amid large batches of tests, but were back below 3% on Tuesday before going up again Wednesday.
Dr. Wilma Wooten, the county’s public health officer, said she is hopeful that as testing continues to increase and stabilize, the recent spikes in cases will subside.
She said officials “hope that over the next five days we will have more consistent numbers.”
Since the first local case in March, the county has recorded 294,573 tests, resulting in 11,626 cases and 347 deaths.
Across California there have been 190,222 cases and 5,632 deaths.
