San Diego County public health officials Monday reported 307 new COVID-19 cases, raising the region's case total to 57,409, while the death toll was unchanged at 891.
Of the 10,248 tests reported Monday, 3% returned positive, bringing the 14-day rolling average of positive tests to 2.9%.
Of the total number of cases in the county, 3,944 — or 6.9% — have required hospitalization and 914 patients — or 1.6% of all cases -- had to be admitted to an intensive care unit.
No new community outbreaks were reported Monday; in the previous seven days, 28 community outbreaks were confirmed. 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.
The county last week avoided returning to the state's purple tier, the most restrictive, remaining in the less restrictive red tier of the state's four-tiered coronavirus monitoring system. The usual Tuesday update on the state's four-tier reopening plan has been rescheduled to Wednesday due to the election, according to county officials.
The county's adjusted case rate dropped to 6.5 new daily COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population.
According to the California Department of Public Health, the county's unadjusted case rate is 7.4 per 100,000 — enough to be in the purple tier, which has a floor of 7 per 100,000. However, the high volume of tests the county is able to perform daily allows for an adjustment from the state. This adjustment has kept the county in the red tier for several weeks, saving it from having to shut down nearly all nonessential indoor businesses.
The state data reflects the previous week's case data to determine where counties stand in the state's reopening system.
San Diego County did show modest improvement, dropping 0.4 from last week's unadjusted case rate of 7.8. The testing positivity rate continued an upward trend, rising 0.2% from last week to reach 3.5%, but 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 5.5% to 5.1% and entered the orange tier. This metric does not move counties backward to more restrictive tiers, but is required to advance.
