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Surely the two-thirds of San Diego County’s residents who are now fully vaccinated would have expected Halloween this year to look very different from when they started getting their vaccinations last winter.
But as kids go trick or treating on Sunday, the numbers don’t look much different from a year ago, prompting health officials to advise caution, just like last Halloween.
Dr. Seema Shah, medical director of the county’s epidemiology and immunization services department, said Wednesday afternoon that the level of the virus still circulating in the community warrants continued vigilance.
“Wearing your mask, using hand sanitizer, cleaning your hands, avoiding large indoor gatherings, these are all recommendations this year,” said Shah. “We still have a good percentage of the population who can still transmit the disease, and we are still a county where there is significant (coronavirus) transmission.
“As long as people aren’t vaccinated, we’re not really going to turn these recommendations off.”
The latest San Diego weekly coronavirus tracking report, released on Wednesday night, looks very similar to what it did the same day a year ago.
In some ways, the numbers look a little worse today, with a seven-day average local case rate of 12.2 per 100,000 residents. That number was listed at 6.5 per 100,000 on the same district “trigger dashboard” that was released on October 27, 2020.
It makes sense that the number of local cases per capita would be higher today, as the testing requirements at schools and workplaces are more intense than they were in the fall of 2020, when the stay at home orders were still in place and the economy hadn’t yet done so opened again.
Although the number of per capita cases is higher than a year ago, the percentage of all tests that return positive is lower, with the most recent 7-day average of 2.8 percent compared to 3.1 percent before 365 Days.
The number of people in local hospitals with confirmed or suspected COVID cases can be a solid way to gauge the current effects of the disease. Wednesday’s report lists a total of 292 COVID-related hospital patients on Tuesday. Last year’s October 27 report listed 239, although there were some changes to hospital reporting methods over the past year that make comparisons imperfect.
Still, the county’s records show that cases and hospital admissions are roughly the same as they were a year ago.
Delta was the difference.
The more infectious variant, which hit the market in late spring and early summer, has proven it can keep local and national COVID numbers higher than they were in June, although vaccines will become a reality in 2021.
The advice from experts last Halloween was to let the kids go in search of candy after dark, but wear quality masks and wash their hands after handling their loot. That remains the Council this year too.
Some parents will disapprove of this advice, believing that the growing natural immunity in the community caused by so many summer infections will prevent the virus from causing a surge after Halloween. With so many vaccinated, compared to last Halloween’s 0 percent vaccination rate, some will focus on scary masks, not medical ones, this year. But others will be nervous about letting kids, the only group not yet approved for the vaccination, out of the house to solicit Snickers bars.
Last year the trick or treating topic was such a big deal that local scientists conducted their own pre-Halloween study asking 10 COVID-positive residents to handle bags of candy and even published a study in an peer-reviewed science journal . They found that only one batch of candy tested positive afterwards. Hand washing by participants seemed to completely eliminate the risk, so both those who dispense candy on Sunday and those who receive candy on Sunday should keep the hand sanitizer flowing.
UC San Diego biologist and microbiome researcher Rob Knight, who worked with microbial ecologist Forest Rohwer last year to conduct the candy study, said in an email on Wednesday that Delta gave him reason to continue to exercise caution this year guess.
“Delta implies that you should be even more careful around people,” Knight said, noting that the variant can be transmitted outdoors because infected people tend to have larger amounts of the virus in their bodies.
Upgrading the fabric face coverings to N95 or similar respirators is the only safe way to really reduce the risk.
As for surfaces like candy wrappers? Keeping last year’s results.
“Although we can detect SARS-COV-2 on surfaces that have been touched by COVID patients, including Halloween candy, as we found last year, there is still no evidence that surfaces are an important route of transmission,” said Knight.
The county’s weekly report lists an additional 29 COVID-related deaths, but some have recently been linked to the disease, although they occurred a long time ago. Twenty-four died in October, three in September, one in August, and one, a 55-year-old man from the southern county, dated February 21. The county did not state why the death of the man was only now COVID. was attributed.
One of the dead was fully vaccinated, 28 were not. Twenty-three had other underlying medical conditions at the time of their death, three had no other health problems, with the remaining three pending health information.
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