San Joaquin County has started to see some positive COVID-19 developments, the county’s top public health official told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.
At the board meeting, county Public Health Officer Maggie Park said the county is seeing less cases after a surge caused by the highly contagious delta variant of the virus.
“We are coming down from this delta surge and it looks as though we are going to continue to descend from our curve,” Park said.
She said the county’s COVID-19 case rate as of Monday is 26.7 per 100,000 and 183 people have been hospitalized due to COVID-19. That number is down from 297 COVID-19 positive patients hospitalized in the county at the start of September, according to state data.
There are 64 people in intensive care units in the county and 56 people on ventilators.
Park told the board that although ICU capacity is at 100 percent, only about 48 percent of the beds are being used by COVID-19 patients.
However, despite the county seeing productive COVID-19 trends, Park said residents should remain cautious about COVID-19 transmission within the community.
“Although we are coming down nicely, just want to remind everyone that are community transmission is still high and our case rates are still high,” Park said.
San Joaquin County has 56.7 percent of people fully vaccinated while California overall has 70 percent of people fully vaccinated, according to the state’s Department of Public Health.
55 percent of people in the United States are vaccinated, Park said.
“Our county mirrors closely that national numbers,” Park said.
San Joaquin County now has 16 fixed test sites, with 10 of them offering rapid testing.