Record low for virus patients
2,826 hospitalizations recorded Wednesday are the fewest since pandemic began a year ago
After a brutal winter coronavirus surge that left thousands dead and hospitals under siege, COVID-19 patients in California have hit a record low.
This week, Golden State hospitals are treating the fewest number of coronavirus patients since the pandemic began, a dramatic turnaround that experts say is evidence of the power of vaccines and an easing of the transmission rates that gripped the state just two months ago.
Back then, hospitals here scrambled to make room for the gravely ill. Hallways jammed with patients waiting for care. Doctors and nurses jostled elbow-to-elbow.
But now, the crush of COVID-19 patients has eased so much that beds are empty for hours at a time most mornings, said Dr. Paul Silka, director of emergency medicine at San Jose’s Regional Medical Center.
“We never say ‘quiet’ in the emergency medicine world, because that throws your whole night off — it curses you,” Silka said. “But I’ve been going around saying, ‘It’s quiet, it’s quiet. It’s slow.’ ”
But any temptation to declare victory based off the plummeting case and hospitalization rates is tempered by what’s happening elsewhere in the country, experts say: From New Jersey to Michigan, states are reporting alarming infection and hospitalization rates — a trend that California health officials are carefully watching.
There were 2,826 patients confirmed or suspected to be sick with the coronavirus in California hospitals as of Wednesday, breaking the previous record low of 2,969 reported on Oct. 24, 2020. California is now reporting the fewest patients since available hospitalization data from the California Department of Public Health starting April 1, 2020, when 5,394 COVID-19 patients
were reported.
It’s not clear when COVID-19 hospitalizations in California were last under 2,800 patients, because in the first month of the pandemic, as the virus began spreading in the community, testing was still severely limited.
This record new low comes as the state has administered more than 16 million vaccine doses. Experts credit some of the record low numbers to the efforts to vaccinate California’s oldest residents, along with health care workers, and those most at risk of becoming severely ill and hospitalized. As of Thursday, just over 11 million Californians are at least partially or fully vaccinated.
While the virus has infected over 3.6 million residents and killed more than 56,000 Californians, daily cases and deaths likewise continue trending downward since their winter peaks.
As more older people in nursing homes, prisoners and others in congregate living facilities receive the vaccine — the same groups that tend to make up the bulk of hospitalizations — the less likely it becomes for the health care system to become overburdened, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an epidemiologist with UC San Francisco.
“It’s a clear sign that the vaccine is working,” ChinHong said. “We still will get hospitalizations and deaths — but hopefully not ever again like the other surges, particularly the winter surge.”
Not all states are still on the downslope. Of particular concern is Michigan, which has experienced a staggering increase in hospitalizations this month: Between March 1 and 23, hospitalizations jumped by 633% for adults ages 3039 and by 800% for adults ages 40-49, according to the state’s Health and Hospital Association.
Data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services show hospitalizations have also increased in Minnesota, New Jersey, Maryland and New York, among other states, when comparing coronavirus patients hospitalized in each state on March 20 with the number from two weeks before.
Dr. George Rutherford, an epidemiologist with UCSF, said Michigan may be experiencing its current surge because of a combination of the prevalence of the B.1.1.7 variant and a lower vaccination rate, although he emphasized that the vaccination rate in Michigan is only slightly lower than California’s.
The B.1.1.7 strain — first identified last fall in the United Kingdom — has worried public health officials and scientists for its 50% increased transmission rate and potential to cause more severe illness. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tracked 8,337 B.1.1.7 cases so far, including 986 cases in Michigan and 471 in California.
In the Bay Area, public heath officials believe multiple variants have been circulating within the community for weeks. The region’s first B.1.1.7 cases were announced in early February in Alameda County. Santa Clara County officials have since identified 19 more cases, plus a second case of the B.1.351 South Africa variant, as of last week. On Thursday, county officials confirmed the region’s first case of the P.1 variant that originated in Brazil.
Epidemiologists are watching those trends closely. Although vaccines should help to prevent the next surge from being as deadly, the unwieldy combination of fast-spreading variants and the ongoing vaccine rollout should give pause to Californians looking to celebrate, Chin-Hong said.
Still, Regional’s Silka is not expecting the same level of bedlam that his emergency department weathered this winter. Instead, he’s gearing up for a series of mini-surges in which patients number in the dozens rather than the thousands, he said.
“We’ll be back in a place where we can do some contact tracing of people, and quarantining, because it just won’t be as rampant,” Silka said. “But it’s still out there.”