SACRAMENTO COUNTY, Calif. — Sacramento County has seen a spike in cases of coronavirus that has required hospitalization in just a matter of days.
One of the zip codes with the highest number of cases is 95823 in South Sacramento.
"This is very very dangerous water that we're treading," said Timothy Poole.
Poole lives in the South Sacramento area and also runs a program mentoring at-risk teens throughout the community. But in the past few weeks, he's noticed many people not quite taking precautions seriously.
"A lot of people are not going out wearing their mask and I think they think that this thing is over," he said.
The numbers however show a bit of a different story. The zip 95823 in South Sacramento is the second-highest zip code in the county for new coronavirus infections with 94 confirmed cases.
Countywide, when we look at the numbers of hospitalized cases, you can see that Sacramento was successful in flattening the curve, up until this past week.
"What we had found that is common through all of these cases, in all of these clusters, is that it's related to gatherings in homes," Dr. Olivia Kasirye, the Sacramento County Public Health Officer said.
The county did expect a slight increase as more businesses started to reopen and the total numbers are also up in South Sacramento specifically because more people now have access to testing at two testing centers close by. But Kasirye says the biggest contributing factor is people being social again.
"House parties, birthday parties, there was also a funeral and some of them were bible study groups," she said.
Poole has seen some of these gatherings with his own eyes.
"My neighbor just had a swimming party. She had over 30 people in her backyard. No one had a mask on, no one was six feet or more apart. They were all in the water [and] barbecuing. Me and my wife said to ourselves, 'There's going to be problems,'" he said.
Kasirye also noted that it's too soon to say if these numbers are tied to the protests we've seen over the past two weeks.
In the meantime, she is encouraging everyone to social distance, wear a face-covering in public, wash your hands, and go get tested if you are experiencing any symptoms.
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Read more from ABC10
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