San Luis Obispo County is reporting the deaths of eight more people who tested positive for COVID-19.
Health officials say the patients were between 60 and 100 years old.
The county of San Luis Obispo had 82 deaths attributed to COVID-19.
The county also added a record 576 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, bringing the county total to 10,178 confirmed cases on December 30.
Public health officials in San Luis Obispo County are attributing the high number of new cases, in part, to the accumulation of cases in the state’s database. On Tuesday, county health officials said a change in the way the state attributes suspected cases to a county was causing a delay in reporting at the local level.
Between Friday and Tuesday, the SLO county reported only 131 new cases of COVID-19, while the state’s COVID-19 website showed 883 new cases in the county in the same period.
County health officials said they are reviewing these cases and expect the total number of confirmed county cases to exceed 10,000 this week.
Currently, 58 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 in San Luis Obispo County, including 11 patients who are in the ICU. Another 2,187 people are recovering at home and health officials say 7,837 people have recovered.
According to the COVID-19 online panel for the state of California, there are currently 19 ICU beds available in San Luis Obispo County.
Breakdown of cases by location:
- Paso Robles – 2,264
- San Luis Obispo – 2,152
- Atascadero – 897
- Arroyo Grande – 733
- California Men’s Colony (Inmates) – 726
- Nipomo – 695
- Grover Beach – 414
- Ocean – 353
- Templeton – 308
- San Miguel – 286
- Cal Poly (campus residents) – 256
- Los Osos – 208
- Morro Bay – 201
- Pismo Beach – 155
- Atascadero State Hospital (patients) – 124
- Shandon – 89
- Santa Margarita – 84
- Cambria – 72
- Creston – 43
- Cayucos – 43
- Avila Beach – 16
- San Simeon – 8
The location of 37 additional cases is under investigation and another 14 are listed as “others”, which includes communities with fewer than five cases. The Department of Public Health is not identifying these locations.
The testing sites of the COVID-19 community are currently open to the public in San Luis Obispo, Paso Robles, Morro Bay, Grover Beach and Nipomo.
Appointments are mandatory in all locations. Click here to schedule an appointment.
For more information on the county’s COVID-19 response, visit readyslo.org.