California’s COVID-19 rates rise amid nationwide spike

Amid a dramatic spike in cases of COVID-19 nationally, California and Bay Area health officials sounded the alarm Monday after seeing signs of the virus re-emerging across the state.

As the U.S. topped 10 million cases, California officials reported 7,212 new cases Sunday, more than twice the 2,981 from two weeks earlier on Oct. 25. The state’s average 14day case positivity rate climbed to 3.7% from 2.5% on Oct. 19.

“Obviously it’s raised some alarm and raised some concern,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in his Monday news briefing, adding that after two months of subsiding cases and reopening progress in much of the state, he expects several counties to regress to more restrictions.

In the Bay Area, several counties were reporting increases in cases. The most populous county, Santa Clara, recorded 358 new COVID-19 cases Sunday, second only to the record 385 new cases reported on July 15. Hospitalizations were up by nearly 10 percent. And officials feared they could be bumped from the orange to the more-restrictive red reopening tier if that continues.

“Our case counts in Santa Clara County are starting to surge — our patterns are starting to look like the rest of the country, the state and our region,” Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody said at a Monday news conference.

Dr. George Rutherford at the University of California-San Francisco said “most of the new cases are from the big Southern California counties, but all nine Bay Area counties had increases from last week, most of them in the 100-200 case range — so we’re far from being in a position to point fingers.”

State and local health officials couldn’t point to any particular cause of the most recent cases. Health and Human Services Agency Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said some counties saw cases linked to restaurants, others to churches. But the only consistent thing mentioned statewide was gatherings of friends and family.

“Our guard may have come down,” Ghaly said, “but we have to put it back up.”

Cody said that after nearly a year of isolation and near-quarantine, “it’s possible we are experiencing pandemic fatigue.”

The recent uptick in California, however, pales in comparison to the nationwide surge.

The country is now averaging more than 110,000 new cases per day, according to data collected by the New York Times, and smashing records almost daily. The daily average of cases has soared by 60% in the past two weeks, outpacing any growth in testing, while the rolling seven-day positivity rate on Sunday reached 8% for the first time since testing became widely available.

The question is whether California is actually faring better than the nation — or simply staring down its future?

For now, despite a number of troubling indicators, there are still, on average, fewer Californians infected with or receiving care for COVID-19 per capita than elsewhere in the U.S. For example, while there were about 237 new infections nationwide in the past week for every 100,000 Americans, in California, there were about 99 new infections for every 100,000 residents.