BY EMILY MIBACH
Daily Post Staff Writer
San Mateo County’s Public Health Department yesterday (March 31) unveiled a website that provides data about COVID-19, however it lacks information on how many coronavirus patients are hospitalized.
The chart is set up in a similar fashion as Santa Clara County’s, but without information about the genders of COVID-19 patients.
Neither county has included information about how many people with the virus are hospitalized.
However, up until Friday, Santa Clara County did provide information about how many people with the virus are hospitalized.
Hospitalization rates can show how stressed local hospitals are with COVID-19 cases.
In fact, the hospitalization rate, and not the number of COVID-19 positives, can give people a better picture of how bad the outbreak is, Stanford Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine Steven Goodman told KPIX5.
A representative of the San Mateo County’s health department said in an unsigned email that the county is not currently working on adding hospitalization data to its site.
On Friday, an anonymous Santa Clara County health department spokesperson said that the county will “continue to refine the dashboards in the coming days.”
According to the state’s CDC, statewide there are 2,274 people with confirmed cases in either the ICU or hospital, and 4,041 people in the ICU or hospital with suspected cases of COVID-19.
San Mateo County debuted the new chart the same day it announced an increase in COVID-19 related deaths, going from six to 10.
The county’s chart also includes information about the age ranges of both COVID-19 patients and the people who have died as a result of the virus.
Of those who have died after contracting the virus, two were in their 60s, one person was in their 70s, and seven people were over the age of 80.
As for the current 309 patients in the county with the virus: two are between 0-9, five are between 10-19, 28 are in their 20s, 51 are in their 30s, 51 are in their 40s, 50 are in their 50s, 61 are in their 60s, 29 are in their 70s, 30 are over 80 and there are two people whose ages are not known.
This information came out as six Bay Area counties including San Mateo extended the regional stay-at-home order until May 3.
While the order that was set to expire on April 7 has been effective in reducing the spread of the virus, it is not enough, according to a joint press release by the six counties.
Despite the stay-at-home order, there has still been an increase of cases, which is beginning to strain the area’s hospitals, according to the press release. The aim of extending the order is to reduce the number of sick people at any one time, giving the area time to get more medical supplies to treat the extension, Dr. Chris Farnitano, Contra Costa County’s health officer said in the release.