There has been a surge in the number of people currently positive with COVID-19 in San Joaquin County due to the state releasing a backlog of case reporting due to computer snafus.

The flood of 1,006 new cases, however, did not jack up the number of people who have COVID-19 by an equal amount. Instead, current positive cases increased by 490 up to 1,615 from 1,128 on Monday and 1,204 on Friday. That means there are 1,615 people out of 760,000 San Joaquin County residents inflicted with COVID-19 but not necessarily sick.

That’s because the new positive cases were reported on the days they were verified. That means if 14 days had passed they were listed as recovered.

Postings on the San Joaquin County COVID-19 dashboard on Tuesday as of 11:30 a.m. show 1,615 persons are currently positive with the virus. That is the number once you subtract the 12,555 people that health officials have determined to have recovered from the 13,870 cases since March. That means 1,128 out of 760,000 San Joaquin County residents currently have COVID-19.

Many may never have been ill.

The mask order and social distancing is designed to protect people from those who may not know they are carrying the virus and who may never show symptoms.

There were 12 more deaths reported to bring the San Joaquin County total to 235. Of the 235 deaths only 14.9 percent did not have pre-existing conditions such as asthma, cardiovascular disease, chronic lung disease, or diabetes.

The site stressed case data after July 27 “is severely delayed due to major technical issues in the State’s electronic reporting system. Data regarding deaths have not been impacted.” It is not clear if there are any other backlogged test results from San Joaquin County yet to be released by the state.

As of Tuesday there were 35 of 72 beds at Doctors Hospital in use.  Ten of the beds had COVID-19 patients with two in ICU beds That compared to Monday when DHM had 10 overall COVID-19 patients with 3 using intensive care unit beds. Kaiser Foundation Hospital of Manteca on Tuesday had 28 beds in use, 13 COVID-19 patients, and 7 using ICU beds.  

On Tuesday there were 168 COVID-19 patients countywide down from 182 on Monday  Of those 57 were using ICU beds down 10 from the previous day.

COVID-19 patients account for 44 percent of the ICU load. There are 131 ICU beds in use of which 32were converted beds. That means as a group hospitals in the county are operating at 132 percent of licensed ICU bed capacity.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com