Avoid Sheet Re-render When Editing Actor's Item

TL;DR How do I avoid a re-render of a character sheet with actor.items displayed, that happens when item.update is called?

I have a simple on event handler on my character sheet like this:
onUpdateItem(event) {
  const { itemId, updateItem } = event.currentTarget.dataset
  const item = this.actor.items.get(itemId)
  item.update({ [updateItem]: event.target.value })
}

with a supporting template (a partial of the character sheet that displays all the items in a table) like so:
<input
  type="number"
  name="item.system.weight"
  data-dtype="Number"
  data-item-id="{{item._id}}"
  data-update-item="system.weight"
  value="{{item.system.weight}}"
/>

and of course an event handler tied in
activateListeners
(with
super.activateListeners(html)
):
html.find('input[data-update-item]').change(this.onUpdateItem.bind(this))


I'm trying to avoid a re-render that happens when
item.update
is called in my character sheet class code. It's bothersome because I would like the fields to be tab-targetable (clicking tab switches user-input to the next input in line), however that focus is lost due to the re-render.
image.png