In a San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday, public health officials said COVID-19 numbers have begun stabilizing and a plateau is being seen throughout the county.
County Public Health Officer Maggie Park reported to the board that the county’s case rate is 15.6 per 100,000 people and testing positivity rate is at 5 percent.
“Our numbers are not continuingly decreasing, it is stabilizing and kind of flatlining,” Park said.
Park said health officials aren’t sure what exactly is causing the plateau rather than a decrease in case numbers, but they believe it could be various factors such as transmissions from younger kids to adults in schools, relaxing on protocols like masking, and lower vaccination rates.
“In this region we do seem to have less vaccination rates than the rest of the state,” Park said.
The statewide vaccination rate for people fully vaccinated is 73.1 percent and San Joaquin County trails behind at 60.3 percent.