Sacramento County’s COVID-19 case rate slowly improving after weeks of plateauing

Sacramento County’s COVID-19 infections are slowly trending downward, improving after several weeks stuck on a plateau that has been keeping business and activity restrictions tighter than most of the rest of the state.

The county’s data dashboard on Thursday showed the latest one-week case rate at 6.7 daily cases per 100,000 residents, its lowest point since Oct. 16.

“The case rate has continued to drop,” county health officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye said on a Thursday teleconference call with reporters.

The daily rate had been hovering between about 7 and 10 per 100,000 from late February through the first week of May.

Stagnant case rates have kept Sacramento along with nearby Placer County in the red tier, the second-strictest level of coronavirus restrictions in the state health department’s four-tier system. Those two are among just 11 of California’s 58 counties still in the red tier, which denotes “substantial” COVID-19 risk, with the rest of the state in looser orange or yellow tiers.

The tier structure requires two consecutive weeks with a case rate below 6 per 100,000 in order to advance to orange, and Sacramento and Placer have been declining slowly toward that threshold in the past few weekly updates from state health officials.

But the earliest either county could enter the orange tier is May 25. With Gov. Gavin Newsom having set June 15 as the targeted end date for the tier structure, that means even a sharp and sudden improvement would only bring looser restrictions for the capital area no sooner than three weeks before statewide restrictions are set to expire.

“We are still hopeful, still putting out hope that we will get the criteria for the orange tier before June 15,” Kasirye said Thursday.

Following comments earlier this week from Newsom suggesting that elements of the statewide mask mandate, especially for outdoor activities, would likely be relaxed around June 15, Kasirye summarized the current mask situation.

“For people who have completed both doses and are beyond two weeks on the second dose, they can engage in activities outdoors without masking,” she said. “We still have to use masks indoors. We are still waiting to see if there will be more changes made from the CDC, especially as more people become vaccinated.

“At this point, I don’t know what it will look like June 15.”

County health officials also spoke Thursday of the continuing effort to shift away from larger vaccination sites to smaller, more targeted efforts.

“The plan right now is to continue having Cal Expo open in a drive-thru fashion as our primary large site,” epidemiology program manager Jamie White said Thursday. “Tentatively, that will go through September.”

White said the drive-up site at McClellan Park will be transitioning to a smaller indoor clinic within the next month, offering Pfizer doses to those 12 and older. Both the Cal Expo and McClellan sites are being administered by Curative, a provider partnered with the county.

California providers on Thursday began giving jabs to adolescents age 12 to 15, after Pfizer’s two-dose regimen was cleared by federal agencies earlier this week. Vaccines from Johnson & Johnson and Moderna remain authorized only for use in those 18 and older.

“We’re also working with the school districts as well as the department of education … making sure there’s a few (vaccination sites) in each district,” vaccine program coordinator Rachel Allen said on Thursday’s call.

The county is also planning to set up small clinics at the Cosumnes River College campus in Sacramento’s Valley Hi neighborhood.

Additionally, officials within the next week plan to launch two new mobile units that will deploy to disadvantaged and low-access ZIP codes around Sacramento County, with specific dates and times set for those mobile efforts to be announced soon.

About 690,000 Sacramento County residents — about 44% of the county’s total population — have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine through Wednesday, according to data from the California Department of Public Health. More than 515,000, or about 33% of the county, is considered fully vaccinated.

The statewide vaccination rates were 50% with at least one dose and 38% fully vaccinated through Wednesday, according to CDPH.