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LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – While the COVID-19 vaccine rollout continues, Lake County’s Public Health officer said Tuesday that the case rate is climbing and he urged residents to stay home for the holidays.
“We are in a situation where the number of cases is increasing dramatically,” Dr. Gary Pace said in a video posted on Facebook.
Separately, he told Lake County News that the “big rise” in local cases is likely due to Thanksgiving, which he said is “very concerning.”
As of Tuesday, Lake County had 1,583 confirmed cases and 22 deaths, Public Health reported.
There are 13 people hospitalized, one of the highest hospitalization rates reported so far locally during the pandemic.
Pace said more than 230 cases are active, by far the highest number of active cases the county has had.
Across the state, more than 1.96 million cases and nearly 23,300 deaths were reported Tuesday by Public Health departments in California’s 58 counties.
Pace said California’s positivity rate was 12.2 percent, while in Lake County it’s ranged between 8 and 11 percent in recent days.
He attributed the local and statewide case increase to the Thanksgiving holiday. “The cases go up and then a couple of weeks later, the hospital rates go up.”
The death rate curve also is moving upward, following case and hospitalization rates, he said.
Neither the case nor the hospitalization rate curves are showing any signs of flattening, with 1,399 intensive care unit beds available statewide and concerns that those remaining beds could be used up in coming weeks, Pace said.
“We’re anticipating that the number of people needing hospital beds is going to continue to increase,” while the number of beds available doesn’t change much, he said.
Lake County has had more than 200 new cases in the last week alone, with a case rate of 31.5 per 100,000 people. Pace said a case rate of 10 per 100,000 is what qualifies for the purple tier, the most restrictive on the state’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy, which Lake County moved into late in November.
State officials have broken down California into five regions for the purposes of case measurement.
Lake County is in the Northern California region, the only one so far that hasn’t been placed in a regionwide stay-at-home order because of the availability of ICU beds falling below 15 percent.
Pace said the Northern California region’s ICU bed capacity has been staying stable at about 28 percent.
However, in Lake County, the pressure on ICU beds is growing. Pace said that on Monday seven of the county’s eight ICU beds were in use.
With the county still able to transport some patients to other regional hospitals, “We’re not in a crisis situation now,” Pace said.
Pace said the state has plans to set up 20 extra beds each in Chico, Marysville and Redding to address the growing bed shortage.
Virus level in community reported to be high
The virus is now popping up all over Lake County, Pace said.
“The virus is spreading throughout the whole community,” said Pace, with the amount of virus in the community very high. He said 75 percent of the county’s total cases tracked to the most populated areas – Lakeport, Kelseyville and Clearlake.
There is an outbreak of more than 100 cases in the tribal community that he said now appears to be slowing.
Pace said one of the skilled nursing facilities, which he did not name, has a significant cluster of cases but the others are OK.
The state’s skilled nursing facility dashboard showed that Rocky Point Care Center in Lakeport has had 50 positive cases among residents and 17 among health care workers, with none of those cases now active.
Lakeport Post Acute has had 41 cases among residents, none of which currently are active, with 23 of its health care workers infected. Less than 11 of those cases with staff remain active.
For Meadowood Nursing Center in Clearlake, there are 12 cases amongst residents, with less than 11 active. It also has less than 11 active cases amongst health care workers.
Less than 11 deaths at each of the facilities were reported for residents, with no reported deaths among health care workers, the state reported.
Pace said Public Health’s efforts are now turning increasingly to communications and public education, and preparing for a change in testing companies that goes into effect in January.
Vaccine being distributed to health care workers
Lake County received the first shipment of 975 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday, and Pace said the focus is on getting them to the staff at the acute care hospitals.
“I’m very, very concerned about what’s going to be happening to our medical infrastructure for the next eight weeks or so, Pace said.
In the coming days, a vaccine clinic will be set up for EMS and first responders, with the next tier of vaccines to cover nursing homes. Pace said pharmacies are helping distribute the vaccine to skilled nursing facilities, with shipments for those populations expected next week.
The goal is to cover these initial tiers before moving on to other medical settings like outpatient clinics, he said.
The state of California expects to have 1.7 million vaccine doses by the end of the month, and by that point Pace estimated Lake County would have received between 1,100 and 1,500 doses.
He said he’s heard concerns about the vaccine and while there have been reports of some people in other parts of the country and the world having allergic reactions, on the local level, “At this point, we’re seeing really good things,” with reactions limited to soreness at the injection point, muscle aches and fever, none of which last long.
Pace said the risk of the disease is much greater than the risk of the vaccine based on what’s known at this time.
“It’s a very, very difficult time right now,” said Pace, noting that the community is now entering the phase he’s been concerned about all along.
“Where this ends up, it looks pretty concerning to me right now,” he said, urging people to stay home for the holidays and protect their families.
Those heightened precautions shouldn’t last long and in a few months we should be on the way out of the situation, Pace said, adding the vaccine is the light at the end of the tunnel.
“I want to really encourage people to be as safe as possible and just take extra precaution this year so we can all be around next year to enjoy each other’s company and have a more normal time together,” Pace said.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
