NBC 7’s Alexis Rivas spoke with the county’s chief public health official and a primary care doctor to find out why.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports the number of Californians admitted to the hospital for COVID-19 is on the rise, again. But so far, that does not appear to be true in San Diego County.
As of December 16th, the most recent date CDC hospitalization data is available, COVID-19 hospitalizations across the U.S. went up by more than 10 percent week to week. This means more than 6.5 million Americans have been in hospital beds with a COVID-19 infection since the start of the pandemic.
In California alone, hospitalizations spiked statewide by more than 14 percent over that same time period. But in San Diego County, hospitals aren’t reporting a lot of COVID-19 activity. “We’re not seeing a large increase in cases or hospitalizations,” said San Diego County Public Health Officer Dr. Wilma Wooten.
In fact, Wooten says the latest local hospitalization numbers actually showed a slight decline and leveling off in COVID patients. “The number of cases, the number of hospitalizations are nowhere close to where we were last year, ” said Wooten. “But things could change in the next week, in the next two weeks,” which is why she stressed the importance of getting a booster shot.
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So why does San Diego County appear to be better off than the rest of the state, or for that matter, the nation?
“We have a new strain which just came out of nowhere,” said Dr. Kaveh Bahmanpour, a primary care physician for Sharp Community Medical Group. He says this new strain, JN-1, is spreading lightning fast in San Diego County, accounting for a dominating number of positive cases.
The upside is so far, it appears the new strain carries very mild symptoms – like an average cold. “Most of the people, they don’t test themselves for COVID anymore,” said Bahmanpour. “So they might get it for a few days and don’t know about it.”
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He says thanks to immunity from prior COVID strain exposure, and widespread awareness about good practices to prevent spreading illness to others, he’s sending far fewer patients to the hospital than this time last year.
“Overall, I don’t see many severe cases now, and people are more cautious,” says Bahmanpour. “Which is really great and I'm really proud of San Diegans.”
While more than 80 percent of eligible people in San Diego County got their first COVID-19 vaccines – only 20 percent are current with a booster shot. A shot Dr. Wooten and Dr. Bahmanpour both say is especially important for those over 60 years old if we want to continue to see those hospitalization numbers stay low.
You can go here for more information on vaccinations.
