COVID-19 infections rising in Sonoma County but not severe illness; no new mandates

Two weeks after the Memorial Day weekend gatherings, Sonoma County health officials say there’s been a slight uptick in known COVID-19 infections.

Add to that the number of unknown COVID-19 infections or infections that don’t get reported due to home testing, and there’s a lot more SARS-CoV-2 going around than the official count.

But the good news is there still hasn’t been the kind of impact on local hospitals you would expect with so many infections, officials said. The number of COVID-19 hospitalizations and related intensive care have remained stable, and pandemic deaths continue to remain low.

Dr. Sundari Mase, the county’s health officer, said the real success of the COVID-19 vaccine — coupled with natural immunity built up over the past two and a half years — is currently playing out. A combination of vaccine, booster and natural immunity, she said, is leading to less severe illness in the local community.

But vaccination, she added, is still the “best tool” for avoiding severe illness.

“So this vaccine does prevent infection to some extent, but since plenty of people who are vaccinated and boosted are getting COVID, the real impact of the vaccine has been to prevent severe disease,” Mase said.

That dynamic, widespread infection that has yet to overwhelm local hospitals, means no change to local public health measures, Mase said. That means no mandate for masking indoors, at this point, she said.

“Our focus in Sonoma County is on hospitalizations, ICU (levels) and deaths,” Mase said. “We’re not hearing that our hospitals are slammed and at risk of being at capacity, even. And we're not seeing high levels of ICU patients and definitely not an increase in depths — those are the markers that we would use, that I would use right now to go to any kind of stricter mandate.”

Though pandemic fatalities are low, the pandemic continues to target the most vulnerable residents. COVID-19 infection is now tied to 495 deaths.

Officials Monday reported the latest COVID-19 fatality, man between 75 and 85 who died at a local hospital June 2. The man, who had an underlying health condition, was “up-to-date” on his vaccination, officials said.

Official virus transmission is currently an average of 41.9 new daily cases per 100,000 residents. Cases have been creeping up since Memorial Day, when the rate was 33 new daily cases per 100,000, said Lucinda Gardner, a county epidemiologist.

Mase said that increase could be due to Memorial Day weekend and graduation gatherings. She said “the pandemic is not over” and there are numerous outbreaks occurring in many different sectors of the community.

To reduce spread of the virus and continue protecting the most vulnerable local residents, Mase strongly encouraged people to use a mask indoors, exercise proper social distancing and get vaccinated and boosted.

According to the latest state data, 40 people hospitalized as of Sunday had tested positive for COVID-19. Of these, five were being treated in ICU.

“The positive thing in all this is that we've made what was a deadly disease for a large percentage of the population something that's much less deadly in terms of bad outcome by getting a high percentage of people vaccinated and boosted,” she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @pressreno.