While COVID-19 cases in Santa Clara County have tended to decline over the summer, the county’s most sensible fitness official said this week that the point of circulation of the virus is likely greater than the county’s number of cases.
Dr. Sara Cody, a health worker and director of public fitness, said Tuesday that the number of cases has been disassociated since May from the amount of virus detected in the county’s main sewer in San Jose, which captures sewage and, by extension, COVID virus waste, from more than 75% of the county’s population.
As a result, the amount of virus available in the county is likely two to three times higher than it appears in the county’s seven-day average of cases.
“If you just look at the number of reported cases, you’d conclude ‘aha, we’re free, we’re almost safe again,'” Cody told the county board of supervisors. “But if you look at wastewater, you can see that sadly, that’s rarely very much the case.
“There is still a number of virus circulating, so our threat of exposure remains high,” he said.
COVID-19 hospitalizations have also declined with COVID-19 cases and levels of the virus in local sewers, but Cody noted that they are not at the lowest point they reached between previous waves.
As of Friday, 123 hospitalized COVID-19 patients countywide.
“Hospitals are doing well and they’re in pretty smart condition, but I wouldn’t say they’re completely out of the woods when it comes to providing care for COVID patients,” Cody said.
Deaths related to COVID-19, the latest wave of cases involving subvariant strains of the omicron variant, have remained well below peaks from previous outbreaks, which reached levels of 50 deaths per day or more.
That said, the county has still shown about 500 COVID-19-related deaths since the beginning of 2022.
The robust death rate, Cody suggested, is due to the county’s highest vaccination rate and, among unvaccinated residents, immunity to a past infection.
As of Monday, 87. 3 of the county’s citizens had completed their initial series of vaccines and 69 of the citizens eligible for boosters five years of age or older had gained at least one booster dose.
“The good news. . . is that we don’t see those big increases of other people dying from COVID, and a lot of that is due to widespread vaccination and boosters,” he said. “Almost the entire population has immunity of one kind or another. “
Cody declined to speculate on how the virus would behave in the winter, citing the unknown about how long variants will coexist with the coverage against serious illness provided by COVID-19 vaccines.
“I can’t tell you precisely what’s just around the corner,” he said. “But I can tell you what we know now and what we can continue to do to each other, even if we step back to anything that seems, at this point, pretty normal, which is good. “
While COVID-19 cases in Santa Clara County have tended to decline over the summer, the county’s most sensible fitness official said this week that the point of circulation of the virus is likely greater than the county’s number of cases.
Dr. Sara Cody, a health worker and director of public fitness, said Tuesday that the number of cases has been disassociated since May from the amount of virus detected in the county’s main sewer in San Jose, which captures sewage and, by extension, COVID virus waste, from more than 75% of the county’s population.
As a result, the amount of virus available in the county is likely two to three times higher than it appears in the county’s seven-day average of cases.
“If you just look at the number of reported cases, you’d conclude ‘aha, we’re free, we’re almost safe again,'” Cody told the county board of supervisors. “But if you look at wastewater, you can see that sadly, that’s rarely very much the case.
“There is still a number of virus circulating, so our threat of exposure remains high,” he said.
COVID-19 hospitalizations have also declined with COVID-19 cases and levels of the virus in local sewers, but Cody noted that they are not at the lowest point they reached between previous waves.
As of Friday, 123 hospitalized COVID-19 patients countywide.
“Hospitals are doing well and they’re in pretty smart condition, but I wouldn’t say they’re completely out of the woods when it comes to providing care for COVID patients,” Cody said.
Deaths related to COVID-19, the latest wave of cases involving subvariant strains of the omicron variant, have remained well below peaks from previous outbreaks, which reached levels of 50 deaths per day or more.
That said, the county has still shown about 500 COVID-19-related deaths since the beginning of 2022.
The robust death rate, Cody suggested, is due to the county’s highest vaccination rate and, among unvaccinated residents, immunity to a past infection.
As of Monday, 87. 3 of the county’s citizens had completed their initial series of vaccines and 69 of the citizens eligible for boosters five years of age or older had gained at least one booster dose.
“The good news. . . is that we don’t see those big increases of other people dying from COVID, and a lot of that is due to widespread vaccination and boosters,” he said. “Almost the entire population has immunity of one kind or another. “
Cody declined to speculate on how the virus would behave in the winter, citing the unknown about how long variants will coexist with the coverage against serious illness provided by COVID-19 vaccines.
“I can’t tell you precisely what’s just around the corner,” he said. “But I can tell you what we know now and what we can continue to do to each other, even if we step back to anything that seems, at this point, pretty normal, which is good. “
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