TRACY, Calif. — San Joaquin County is seeing a new spike in coronavirus hospitalizations and the number of patients being sent to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), according to new numbers released on Tuesday.
Hospitals hit their peak across the county in early April, but the numbers are starting to go up again.
Planned Parenthood Mar Monte set up a drive-thru testing site in Tracy back in April. They say they've seen a big increase in positive cases, which they believe is likely tied to the county opening things back up.
Nearly three months into the pandemic, folks in San Joaquin County can dine-in at most restaurants, visit a shopping mall in person, and even go get a haircut.
"Our risk is only going up now that we're going into different phases of reopening in different communities," Roza Fray, the Director of Quality/Nusing at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte said.
Health officials like Fray knew there was a risk with reopening. And now, the county is seeing a spike in hospitalized cases, a total of 43 as of Monday, something the county hasn't seen since early April.
Because of this, San Joaquin County Public Health Officer Dr. Maggie Park says the state has placed San Joaquin County on a monitoring system for the next 14 days. They're specifically keeping an eye on increasing hospitalizations and a limited hospital capacity.
"If the county has insufficient progress over a 14-day period on containing their disease transmission or hospitalization rates, [it] should consider reinstituting sector limitations or more general stay-at-home provisions. If the county makes insufficient or no progress, a state public health officer may take action," Park told the county Board of Supervisors in a meeting on Tuesday.
The county says the spike likely has several causes, including finding more cases in nursing homes, the increased availability of testing, and with more people now out and about, more are getting exposed.
"As we open, reopen in phases, sometimes what that means to the community and what they hear is that it's safe to do certain things, and that's not necessarily the truth," Fray said.
Fray says it's too early to tell if this spike is related to protests we've seen over the past two weeks, that may not be reflected in the numbers for a couple more weeks.
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