COVID-19 death toll increasing in San Diego

Despite declines in new cases and hospitalizations, San Diego County began to see the toll of the Omicron wave Wednesday with 113 new COVID-19 related deaths listed in the county’s weekly coronavirus update.

Though the vast majority had underlying health conditions in addition to testing positive, county records indicated that two had no other medical problems. One was a 28-year-old man from central San Diego who died on Jan. 23, and the second was a 31-year-old woman from South County who died on Jan. 17.

The county did not indicate in its weekly update Wednesday whether the two were vaccinated. Aggregated totals indicated that 46 of the 113 who died were fully vaccinated, and 67 were not.

It is unclear just how deadly the Omicron wave will turn out to be. While the number of new cases and hospitalizations continues to trend downward, there remained 1,306 county residents admitted to the region’s non-military hospitals with confirmed or suspected to be fighting COVID-19 Tuesday. That total is hundreds higher than was observed at the peak of the summer Delta surge, and many fight the disease for weeks before they succumb.

And COVID-19 death statistic reporting is generally quite slow due to the death certificate and case review process that takes place before each death is counted. The official total reached 4,735 in Wednesday’s report. Illustrating the point that it will be weeks before the true number of deaths that occurred during the Omicron surge is known, 40 of the 113 deaths added to the list occurred more than two weeks ago.

In a statement released Wednesday evening, Dr. Wilma Wooten, the county’s public health officer, said that deaths are “on the rise.”

“While you can still get COVID-19 despite being vaccinated and boosted, the vaccine keeps most people out of the hospital and reduces the risk of virus-related deaths,” Wooten said.

Getting one’s booster shot continues to be the best survival indicator. Over the past 30 days — from Dec. 21 through Jan. 19 — 195 people in San Diego County have died after testing positive for coronavirus infection. Two of those have been boosted, with 66 fully vaccinated and 127 not fully vaccinated.

About 0.1 percent of those not fully vaccinated who tested positive in the past month died, compared to 0.06 percent of those who were fully vaccinated and 0.007 percent of those who were boosted.

Those numbers felt about right to Dr. Rodney Hood, a general practitioner serving the most diverse parts of the San Diego community. After managing to get through the first several waves of the pandemic without picking up an infection, the physician said he recently came down with cold-like symptoms that turned out be caused by coronavirus. Though his illness was mild, Hood said he has started to hear from some patients who remained unvaccinated who have now become infected during the Delta and Omicron waves.

Though many still shrug off vaccination even after getting sick, especially if they had a relatively mild illness, Hood noted that the vaccination rate among the region’s Black residents is now approaching 51 percent after seeming stuck under the 50/50 mark for all of 2021.

“In my own practice, I’m starting to see a little bit of an uptick in vaccination because they’re either seeing family or friends struggle with it, or because they recently had it,” Hood said.

About 2.5 million San Diego County residents — 80 percent of the 3.1 million aged 5 and older who are eligible — are now fully vaccinated. About 1 million of those have received booster does out of an estimated 2 million who are currently eligible.

The number of new cases detected across the region continues to run significantly lower than it has recently. New case totals reported by the county health department from Sunday through Tuesday have remained under 3,000, a significant reduction compared to recent totals that exceeded 10,000 per day.

Wooten noted in Wednesday’s statement that lower new-case totals can be a bit misleading because so many are now using home tests that do not get reported for inclusion in aggregated health statistics.

“Virus activity in the region is likely a lot higher than confirmed cases reflect, so people should continue to take precautions to protect themselves and their loved ones,” Wooten said.

The San Diego Union-Tribune would like to speak with anyone who recently lost a loved one, or was hospitalized with COVID-19 in December or January. Email paul.sisson@sduniontribune.com.