Surging caseloads in nearly every state have pushed the daily COVID-19 tally to a record 104,004 new infections Wednesday, November 4.
Eighteen — including Kansas, Tennessee, Virginia, Oklahoma, Montana, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Ohio, Nebraska, Minnesota, Indiana, Wisconsin and West Virginia — reported record numbers of patients hospitalized with COVID.
The new numbers have pushed the total number of coronavirus deaths reported since February past 233,000, according to data tracked by The Washington Post.
As the national record daily tally is shocking, the County of San Diego COVID-19 case rate rose to 7.4 pushing the county closer to the most restrictive purple tier, according to the California Department of Public Health.
The county’s updated case rate reported last week is outside the 4.0 to 7.0 range of the red tier and qualified it for the purple tier, or tier 1. This could mean a rollback of business reopening’s for the region. Supervisor Nathan Fletcher said Wednesday, “In the month of October, our unadjusted case count went from 7 to 7.2 to 7.8. It has now gone to 8.7.”
The county’s unadjusted case rate is now at 8.7 while the adjusted case rate for tier assignment is 7.4, Dr. Wooten reported Wednesday. According to the 7SanDiego:
If San Diego County were to shift to it, restaurants would be forced to cease indoor operations, and gyms and places of worship would have to offer their services outdoors. Dr. Wooten said schools that are already open for in-person instruction will continue, but no new schools will be allowed to reopen.
“The truth is, that people are tired of this pandemic and unfortunately are letting down their guard, not wearing their masks, not maintaining social distancing, and all the other things we’ve been talking about these past few months,” Supervisor Greg Cox said in Wednesday’s county briefing.
The four-tiered, color-coded system ranks counties based on the number of virus cases and infection rates. Businesses can add more customers or open more services as their county moves into lower tiers.
In order to move into a more restrictive tier, the CDPH website says, “If a county’s adjusted case rate and/or test positivity has fallen within a more restrictive tier for two consecutive weekly periods, the state will review the most recent 10 days of data, and if CDPH determines there are objective signs of improvement the county may remain in the tier. If the county’s most recent 10 days data does not show objective signs of improvement the county must revert to the more restrictive tier. “
For now, San Diego County will remain in Tier 2, also known as the Red Tier.
San Diego’s case rate is at 7.4 but our testing positivity is at 3.2%, which falls into the less restrictive orange tier. When the metrics fall in different tiers, the county is assigned to the more restrictive tier.
As of Wednesday, San Diego County has reported 58,106 positive COVID-19 cases and 904 deaths since the outbreak was first detected in the county.
(Hat tip to Brent Beltran)
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Thank you for keeping us posted. Now almost exactly a year has passed since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Now I remember that as soon as the infections began in China, I, like most people, did not take the threat seriously. It seemed to me that this would not go fast enough and would not leave the country. As it turned out, we were wrong. Now I understand that we have greatly underestimated this situation. I really hope that this will soon pass and the number of sick people will begin to decrease. I hope that we will overcome this problem and everything will return to normal. If not now, then at least in the near future.