A day after the Bay Area’s deadliest 24 hours of the COVID-19 outbreak, San Mateo County reported another large swath of fatalities attributed to the deadly new disease.
Eight more people in the county had succumbed to the virus, officials announced Thursday. It had been 10 days since they last reported a coronavirus-related casualty in the county, when there were also eight new deaths. The death toll now stands at 28, while the case count rose by 20 to 768.
County health officer Dr. Scott Morrow, however, cautioned earlier this week that those numbers are not representative of the whole picture. Testing shortfalls mean there 2-3% of the county — 15,000 to 25,000 people — could have been infected by now, Morrow said.
The county death tolls don’t reflect daily deaths, but an accumulation over time. San Mateo has only updated its death toll twice since April 3, when 13 people in the county had died.
Even while warning of possibly thousands of unconfirmed cases in the county, Morrow was confident the county had flattened the curve, at least for now. That’s because residents’ adherence to shelter-in-place orders, but also promising data on hospitalizations, which doesn’t require widespread testing to reflect an accurate picture.
The number of those in hospital beds decreased again in new data reported by the county Thursday. On Tuesday, the most recent day for which data was available, there were 67 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 across the county, down from 76 the previous day. There was one more patient in intensive care, with 25 of the negative-airflow rooms still available.
The county also increased its supply of ventilators this week, from about 160 to 197. There were 50 in use Tuesday, the most the most recent day for which data was available.
The confirmed cases are split about evenly between those over and under 50 years old. Women account for 54% of the known cases, but of the 28 who have perished, about 60% have been men. The majority of deaths have been among those older than 80, who account for 17 of the 28 fatalities.
The county also released new demographic data that showed 13 of the 28 fatalities have been white (46.4%), 10 have been Asian (35.7%) and three Hispanic (10.7%). About 39% of the county’s overall population is white, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau, while about 30% are Asian and 24% Hispanic/Latinx.
The average length of time to receive test results in the county dropped under two days in new data reported Thursday. Labs in the county have now conducted 7,295 tests, with about 10.5% coming back positive.
Across California, there were more than 27,000 confirmed cases by the end of Wednesday. The new deaths in San Mateo pushed the Bay Area total close to 180, about 15% of the total fatalities from the virus in the state, after four local counties reported 23 new deaths on Wednesday.
