The exterior of Alameda County's vaccination clinic for law enforcement workers across the county. Some 900 law enforcement officials and employees received their first of two vaccine doses during the clinic at the Alameda County Sheriff's Department's Regional Training Center in Dublin, Calif. on February 18, 2021. (Eli Walsh/Bay City News)

COVID-19 cases spiked recently at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, an Alameda County sheriff’s spokesman said Tuesday.

Forty-six inmates tested positive for the coronavirus and nine of those are symptomatic, sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Ray Kelly said. The rest are asymptomatic. None of the cases are serious.

The nine symptomatic inmates are isolated in a housing unit and are under close observation.

“We’ve been down this road before,” Kelly said.

Previously, the jail had a spike of about 110 cases, he said.

Since the pandemic started, more than 700 coronavirus cases have been reported at the jail and only two people have been hospitalized. Both people recovered, Kelly said.

“We’ve been fortunate with COVID,” Kelly said. “We’ll get through this spike.”

He said if a surge occurs in the general population, a surge will occur at the jail. The surge is not widespread, with the jail population currently at 2,165.

Keith Burbank is currently a fulltime reporter covering Alameda County and Oakland news for Bay City News. He has also worked on the Data Points project for Local News Matters, finding trends and stories about the region through data. In 2019, he was a California Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism, producing a series about homeless deaths in Santa Clara County. He worked as a swing shift editor for the newswire for several years as well. Outside of journalism, Keith enjoys computer programming, math, economics and music.