Santa Clara County breaks down COVID-19 cases by city; Palo Alto has 57

April 9, 2020 5:45 pm
Santa Clara County in tan
cases population ratio
Palo Alto 57 67,178 0.0848%
Mountain View 30 81,438 0.0368%
Los Altos 18 30,743 0.0585%
Los Altos Hills 0 8,500 0.0000%
Sunnyvale 65 153,656 0.0423%
Cupertino 17 60,777 0.0280%
Saratoga 0 30,905 0.0000%
San Jose 958 1,035,000 0.0926%
Los Gatos 21 30,724 0.0684%
Campbell 26 41,544 0.0626%
Milpitas 43 78,106 0.0551%
Santa Clara 54 127,134 0.0425%
Morgan Hill 0 45,037 0.0000%
Gilroy 24 57,664 0.0416%

BY SARA TABIN
Daily Post Staff Writer

Santa Clara County Health Department officials today started releasing the number of COVID-19 cases by city after refusing to do so because of privacy concerns, and the first batch of numbers show 57 cases in Palo Alto.

Countywide there are 1,442 reported cases, including 285 people in the hospital, and 47 deaths. A lack of testing makes it difficult to know the true number of people who are infected.

Palo Alto has a population of 67,178, meaning 0.0848% of the population is known to have contracted the virus.

The county has reported 30 cases in Mountain View (population 81,438) and 18 cases in Los Altos (population 30,743). The bulk of cases, 958, are from San Jose.

County deaths from COVID-19 are now being broken down by race/ethnicity.

Only 26.9% of people in the county are Hispanic according to census data but 36% of the 47 people who have died from COVID-19 are Hispanic. Black people make up 2.6% of people in the county and about 4%, or two, of the deaths.

Black and Hispanic people have made up a disproportionate number of deaths in New York City. Unequal access to health care is one possible reason for this trend.

There is an almost even split between men and women with COVID-19 but men account for 70% of the deaths. Men have made up a majority of the deaths in other countries like China, Spain and Italy. Some scientists speculated that men are more vulnerable because they are more likely to smoke than women. Other researchers think female hormones might have protective effects against coronaviruses.

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10 Comments

  2. These numbers are super misleading.. please note the following:
    1- according to SCC CoVId dashboard we have done only tested 14,000 people in SCC of 2M population. that is exactly ~0.7%
    2- according to above a city like Las Altos has only 18 cases which incorrect by a factor of 15! because we have only tested 0.7% of the population. so the real number is 18 x 144 = ~2600 in Los Altos now infected.
    3- Let’s calculate that number another way.. According to a chart from SCC dashboard itself, 10.5% of tested in SCC were infected. Again for a city Like Los Altos of 30K populations that translates to 30,000/10.5 = ~2800.
    so any way you look at this the chart you attached and the numbers that SCC are providing are SUPER misleading. Even if discount the numbers above by 50% still we are talking in vicinity of 100X more cases in our county than what is reported in the above chart.

  3. These numbers are super misleading.. please note the following:
    1- according to SCC CoVId dashboard we have done only tested 14,000 people in SCC of 2M population. that is exactly ~0.7%
    2- according to above a city like Las Altos has only 18 cases which incorrect by a factor of 15! because we have only tested 0.7% of the population. so the real number is 18 x 144 = ~2600 in Los Altos now infected.
    3- Let’s calculate that number another way.. According to a chart from SCC dashboard itself, 10.5% of tested in SCC were infected. Again for a city Like Los Altos of 30K populations that translates to 30,000/10.5 = ~2800.
    so any way you look at this the chart you attached and the numbers that SCC are providing are SUPER misleading. Even if discount the numbers above by 50% still we are talking in the vicinity of 100X more cases in our county than what is reported in the above chart.

  4. The only way we can have non-misleading numbers is to test 100% of all residents. So let’s get the police to go door to door to get these tests done!

    Fun to see how a pandemic brings out the authoritarian in our local Progressives.

    • Cliff. that was not what I was suggesting!.. all we have to do is to multiple the provided numbers by x 144 (maybe by x 100 for margin of error), and then you get a set of numbers that much closer to real count. Certainly, as we do more tests, the margin or error becomes smaller! bu the numbers provided here are way off! at least by a factor of 100.

  5. These numbers really are not that meaningful because they are a direct function of the number of tests conducted. For instance, Palo alto has higher numbers because there are more tests done in Palo Alto (Stanford hospital is in Palo Alto), and not necessarily because it has more cases in it than Mountainview.

  7. Ramin Shahidi, for someone complaining about misleading numbers, your math is really terrible. First, you can’t just divide the number of confirmed cases by the ratio of people who have been tested. That would only work if a random sample of the population had been tested. That is absolutely not the case. The vast majority of those tested are already symptomatic. You can’t infer *anything* about the true infection rate from the number of confirmed cases and the testing rate.

    Second, for your “better” calculation, why are you *dividing* the population by a percentage?? Even if your logic were correct (which it isn’t, for the reason above), you would multiply 30k by 0.105, or divide it by about 9.5. But since that calculation is premised on the faulty assumption that testing is random, it’s meaningless anyway.

    To quote the PAMF website “Testing is available to patients with symptoms and a Sutter clinician referral. Schedule a video visit or call our advice line for guidance.” And only 10% of *them* have tested positive.

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