The Santa Clara County Health Department held a press conference on Monday to warn the public about a surge in COVID-19 cases reported over the weekend.
Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody displayed a graph showing a dramatic spike representing 358 new Coronavirus cases reported on Sunday. That is the second-highest number of cases reported on one day in the county since the pandemic began in March. July 15th still holds the record with 385 new cases.
Santa Clara County, which is in the orange tier in the state’s monitoring program, also reported that hospitalizations were up by 10% on Sunday. Health officials said if the increases continue the state would be forced to put the county back into the red tier which would force devastating rollbacks on reopenings.
The news is not good with just over two weeks until all those Thanksgiving gatherings. The warning also comes as the weather gets much cooler which means there is bound to be the annual influx of flu cases that hospitals will have to deal with as well.
"This surge in COVID-19 cases is not what we want to see going into the fall and winter holiday season,” Dr. Cody said during the press conference. So far it remains unclear what caused the recent surge in cases but the county says the group reporting the most cases has been young adults ranging in age from 18 to 34.
Santa Clara County had been doing a good job containing the number of Coronavirus cases and upping the amount of testing. Hoodline reported last week that the county recently hit a milestone of one million COVID-19 tests administered county-wide.
"Then you can see that over October, we began to drift up, and we've been tracking that drift up and we've been talking about that drift up. But what's happened in the last week. It is no longer a drift, our cases are surging up,” Dr. Cody said.
Dr. Cody also made a plea to the public about what she called "pandemic fatigue."
"What we mean by pandemic fatigue is that all of us have been worrying about COVID for a very long time. We’re wearing masks, we’re washing hands, we’re not seeing friends, we’re not seeing family. And it takes an extraordinary amount of effort to keep it up, and people are tired. We’re here today to say we hear you, we understand you’re tired and you still have to keep it up," Dr. Cody said.
According to the county’s COVID-19 Testing Dashboard, more than 31-thousand people have tested positive in the county since the pandemic started.
The county also said that it will continue to issue violations as it enforces Coronavirus health restrictions.
Officials said they have received more than 1,800 complaints about health violations and have issued more than $600,000 in fines to people breaking the rules. They vowed to work harder responding to complaints as a way to help keep the recent surge in check. You can report violators at SCCCOVIDConcerns.org.
