San Diego County sees more COVID-19 cases and community outbreaks, but positivity rate is low

SAN DIEGO — Public health officials in San Diego County reported 430 new COVID-19 infections and one more death Friday, raising the region's cumulative totals to 53,928 cases and 867 fatalities.

Of the 13,360 tests reported Friday, 3% returned positive, bringing the 14-day rolling average percentage of positive cases to 2.7%, far below the state-set target of less than 8%.

Of the total COVID-19 cases in the county, 3,827 or 7.1% have been hospitalized, with 884 -- or 1.6% -- spending at least some time in an intensive care unit. The number of current COVID-19 hospital patients in the region is 236, with 73 of those in the ICU.

Five new community outbreaks were reported Friday. In the past seven days, 21 community outbreaks were confirmed, well above the trigger of seven or more in a week's time.

A community outbreak is defined as three or more COVID-19 cases in a setting and in people of different households over the past 14 days.

San Diego State University announced Thursday that it had issued a stay-at-home advisory for all students. The advisory is set to begin at 6 p.m. and run through Monday, Nov. 2 at 6 a.m.

University officials said the move was made to discourage students from participating in Halloween events where physical distancing cannot be done. Students are advised to stay home unless they had an essential need.

The university has had a total of 1,237 COVID-19 cases since the fall semester began, including 419 among students living on-campus, 789 among students living off-campus, 16 among faculty and staff and 13 among "visitors" -- defined as someone who has had exposure with an SDSU-affiliated individual.

UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla announced Thursday that all employees able to effectively work remotely will continue to do so through March 12, the end of its winter quarter.

"Empowering employees to continue to work from home whenever possible greatly reduces the population density on campus, which helps protect our students, student-facing employees and other essential staff working on site," said Nancy Resnick, UCSD's chief human resources officer.

On Tuesday, despite an unadjusted daily COVID-19 case rate of 7.8 per 100,000 population, the county was again able to avoid being pushed into the purple tier of California's four-level reopening system, which would have placed indoor activities at restaurants, movie theaters, gyms and a number of other locations in jeopardy.

The state adjusted the data for the week of Oct. 4-10 down to 7 per 100,000 -- the highest it can be without heading into the purple tier -- due to the county's high rates of testing. The data are reported on a one-week delay.

The state reported that the testing positivity percentage for the region increased from 3% to 3.3%, but it still remains low enough for this metric to remain in the orange tier. If a county reports statistics meeting metrics in a higher tier for two consecutive weeks, it will move into that more restrictive tier for a minimum of three weeks.

The state's health equity metric, which looks at the testing positivity for areas with the lowest healthy conditions, dropped from 5.7 to 5.5% and remained in the red tier. This metric does not move counties backward to more restrictive tiers, but is required to advance.