Social gatherings help fuel rising coronavirus spread in parts of California

SAN FRANCISCO – Elevated coronavirus transmissions and related hospitalizations are worsening in some parts of California, and a failure to wear masks in public and increased gatherings are partly to blame, health officials said.

Riverside and San Bernardino counties have recently appeared or reappeared on the state’s list of counties needing targeted monitoring by state officials. In both counties, increases in gatherings were a factor in elevated disease transmission, as were outbreaks at state prisons, nursing homes and patients being transferred from Imperial County, which is home to a particularly bad outbreak.

Gatherings were also a factor in increasing hospitalizations in Santa Barbara, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties. Officials also blamed “decreased attention to personal protection measures such as face coverings and social distancing” in Stanislaus County, whose largest city is Modesto.

To be sure, California health officials say long-term hospitalization rates remain stable, as is the percentage of those testing positive. But there has been an uptick in hospitalizations related to the coronavirus in the last week; between June 14 and June 20, the number of people in the hospital with confirmed and suspected cases of COVID-19 rose from 4,323 to 4,679, an 8% increase.

The concern comes as health care experts sounded the alarm about growing disease transmission rates across the nation. Community transmission of the highly contagious virus continues to be a problem not only in states such as Arizona, Florida and Texas, but also in California, according to Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, who was speaking on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

In fact, the pandemic may not slow during the summer as some experts had hoped it might. Instead of distinct waves _ a first wave in the spring, followed by a quieter summer and a second wave in the fall _ the nation, still stuck in its first wave, may continue to see the pandemic persist without a summer respite.

“This is more like a forest fire. ... Wherever there is wood to burn, this fire is going to burn. And right now, we have a lot of susceptible people,” Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, warned Sunday on NBC’S “Meet the Press.” “I don’t see this slowing down through the summer or into the fall. ... I think we’re going to just see one very, very difficult forest fire of cases.”

Some parts of California, including the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County, have not seen spikes in hospitalizations even though overall cases are going up.

Barbara Ferrer, L.A. County’s public health director, said Friday that average daily deaths have continued to decline. In early May, L.A. County experienced an average of 45 deaths per day; in early June, there were an average of 20 to 30 deaths reported daily.

Hospitalizations in L.A. County had been steadily decreasing but have recently plateaued, Ferrer said.

It’s possible that a reason for this might be that all hospital patients are being tested for the coronavirus, even if they’re in the facility for a completely different reason. “So we’ll need to watch this information carefully over the weeks ahead,” Ferrer said.