Health officials in rural Trinity County are confronting a spike in coronavirus cases.
The county’s test positivity rate was about 10 percent over the past two weeks. That’s more than double the statewide average, and officials say it signals expanding community spread.
The rise in cases also highlights that even sparsely populated counties aren’t shielded from the virus.
Marcie Jo Cudziol, Trinity County’s public health branch director, says the virus doesn’t care if you’re in an urban or rural area.
“Once it gets in, it is going to infect 70 percent of the population until there’s acquired herd immunity through some sort of immunity passed on by infection, and we don’t really know what that looks like yet,” she said. “Or a vaccine. Or we mimic herd immunity by staying 6 feet apart, masking, closing bars, limiting gatherings.”
Trinity County moved into the most restrictive, purple tier under the state’s reopening plan earlier this week.
Cudziol says transmission has been happening at bars, workplaces and church gatherings, but also elsewhere.
“From that, then you have spread to families and children,” she said. “Our case positive rate for children is now at 7.2 percent, which in a little rural county you wouldn’t think that that could be so. And 25 percent of those quarantined right now are children.”
Trinity County has reported 98 total cases of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. Forty-four of those are currently described as active cases