San Mateo County Health Chief Louise Rogers said Tuesday that there may still be difficult weeks ahead because of COVID-19, with tremendous pressure on hospitals.
Although the rate of cases in the county may be beginning to plateau, health officials say it is not yet time to rest.
"It's like we're still at the top of the mountain and we have to get down the mountain before we can rest," Rogers said at Tuesday's county Board of Supervisors meeting.
Although the number of hospitalizations in the county has held steady over the past week, and the 31 patients in the intensive care unit are far fewer than the number of ICU patients during last winter's surge, hospitals have faced staffing shortages in recent weeks.
At San Mateo Medical Center, the county's public hospital and clinics, approximately 6.5 percent of staff recently left with a confirmed, suspected or quarantined infection, according to County Health spokesman Preston Merchant.
In terms of case numbers, Rogers said community transmission remains high despite the plateau.
"We are beginning to see the horizon beyond this current surge with cases beginning to stabilize in the last week, albeit at very high levels, still higher than other earlier phases of this pandemic," Rogers said.
Rogers stressed that there was an average of 213 cases per 100,000 population in the population reported Monday, down slightly from 217 a week ago. These are numbers the state reports as a seven-day average.
In terms of testing, the proportion of positive results of all persons tested is 17 percent, similar to the last few weeks.
Following testing delays, county administrator Mike Callagy said the county will end its partnership with biohealth technology company Virus Geeks at the end of the month.
Callagy said Virus Geeks had a supply chain issue with its supplier. In a statement on its website, it reported that due to the high demand for testing, "we partnered with an outside laboratory to process the excess samples. Unfortunately, the partner lab was unable to deliver test results at the same speed that we have provided to our customers and patients over the past year."
With these delays, Callagy believes that some people never got results and that for that reason the county will move on to working with another organization to help with testing.
The county is also coordinating the distribution of rapid antigen home test kits to at-risk communities, such as low-income families with children under 5 years of age, through the County Office of Education.
Vaccination rates are slowly increasing, with 88 percent of all county residents having received at least one dose of the vaccine.
With more than 75,000 booster vaccines delivered at the San Mateo County Event Center, Lizelle Lirio de Luna, director of Family Health Services for the county, said demand at that site had decreased slightly, but there has been a steady uptake at other vaccine sites, such as school and community clinics.
De Luna encouraged everyone who is eligible for the booster to obtain optimal protection against the virus.
"There's no better time for people to get vaccines and boosters," de Luna said. "We also want everyone to know that continuing to wear a protective mask that really fits well and can be worn consistently is very important, and also getting tested if symptoms arise and, of course, isolating yourself when you are sick."
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