COUNTY SETS RECORD WITH 1,802 NEW CASES
Data shows most counties in California experiencing worst case rates of pandemic
The number of daily new COVID-19 cases in San Diego County continues to shatter records, with the county reporting 1,802 new cases on Thanksgiving Day.
That surpasses the county’s previous daily record of 1,546 cases, reported on Monday.
Earlier this month, San Diego County was reporting daily case totals of no more than several hundred. In the past week, that has climbed to 1,000 or more cases per day.
The autumn surge in coronavirus cases has now spread not only through heavily populated areas like San Diego, but to the far northern rural reaches of California.
A data analysis by the Los Angeles Times found that most California counties are now suffering their worst daily coronavirus case rates of the pandemic, surpassing even the summer surge that had forced officials to roll back the state’s first reopening in the late spring.
The data suggests California will face new problems in December if the unprecedented rise in cases continues. In earlier phases of the pandemic, different parts of California could help harder-hit areas — San Diego County and San Francisco, for example, took in patients from Imperial County. But that could be difficult in this wave, with the pandemic worsening in most places across California simultaneously.
“We can’t depend on our counties next to us because they are under the same stress and strain,” said Dr. Marty Fenstersheib, the Santa Clara County coronavirus testing officer. “They can’t provide us with beds in their counties. So we are on our own. And our hospitals are hurting at this point.”
The data analysis also shows how the coronavirus has managed to break free from densely packed neighborhoods in urban areas and farming communities in agricultural valleys, where the virus infected essential workers — many of them Latino — who had to leave
home to work.
Now, infections are spreading faster in other communities. In Marin County, health officer Dr. Matt Willis said the pandemic has moved from hitting predominantly Latino communities. Now, in just the last month, “the majority of cases are among our White residents,” Willis said.
“We’re finding a greater proportion of those cases among people who are gathering indoors, and might have a more reasonable option to avoid those exposures, because they’re based on personal choices,” Willis told the Board of Supervisors. “It’s most discouraging that that’s what is driving it — but also encouraging because we think those are behaviors that people have more control over, because it’s not a matter of economic necessity.”
In addition to San Diego, record average daily coronavirus case rates have hit Los Angeles and other hot spots such as San Bernardino County, the analysis found. Such areas have already received much attention in recent weeks as hospitals have begun to fill and, in some cases, the daily death toll has risen. The crisis has become exponentially worse in recent weeks.
Many other counties are also seeing record highs in their average daily case rates, including Ventura, San Luis Obispo, Santa Clara, Sacramento, San Mateo, Solano and Santa Cruz.
Counties across Northern California have also posted record highs in recent days, including Napa, Yolo, Nevada, Placer and El Dorado counties, and sparsely populated Mariposa County, home to Yosemite Valley.
In all, more than 23 million Californians, in 31 counties, are in what is shaping up to be the worst wave of the pandemic, the analysis found.
Across California, the seven-day average of daily coronavirus cases has more than quadrupled since midOctober, from fewer than 3,000 a day to nearly 14,000 a day as of Wednesday. In just two weeks, average daily deaths have doubled: In the seven-day period that ended Wednesday, the state had an average of 74 COVID-19 deaths a day, up from 38.
As of Friday evening, Cali
fornia had a total of more than 1.17 million confirmed coronavirus cases and more than 19,000 related deaths, according to the Times’ coronavirus tracker.
San Diego County has recorded 78,159 total cases since the pandemic began.
Officials sounded alarm bells all over the state, from the Mexican border, where officials in Imperial County established an overf low medical tent with 50 beds to handle a surge in patients, to Shasta County in the far north, which reported hundreds of people in isolation and thousands in quarantine.
The rate of coronavirus transmission in Los Angeles County is now at the highest level since the first few weeks of the pandemic. Officials estimate that every infected person, on average, transmits the virus to 1.27 other people.
“We have not seen (a transmission rate) this high in Los Angeles County since mid-March at the very beginning of the pandemic — before any of the prevention or safety measures were put into place,” said Dr. Christina Ghaly, the county’s director of health services.
The county is now on pace to see the number of new daily coronavirus cases double in two weeks and quadruple in a month, Ghaly said.
In response, Los Angeles County announced a new stay-home order Friday, banning most gatherings but stopping short of a full shutdown on retail stores and other non-essential businesses.
The three-week “safer at home” order takes effect Monday.
The county had set a threshold for issuing the stay-home order: an average of 4,500 cases a day over a five-day period, but hadn’t expected to reach that level until next month.
However, the five-day average of new cases reported Friday was 4,751.
“We know we are asking a lot from so many who have been sacrificing for months on end,” Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said. “Acting with collective urgency right now is essential if we want to put a stop to this surge.”
The order advises residents to stay home “as much as possible” and to wear a face covering when they go out. It bans people from gathering with others who aren’t in their households, whether publicly or privately.
However, exceptions are made for church services and protests, “which are constitutionally protected rights,” the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said in a statement.
Just last week, there were nearly 200 people a day being admitted to hospitals in Los Angeles County; that number has increased to nearly 300 hospital admissions daily, Ghaly said. If disease transmission behavior doesn’t dramatically change soon, hospitals could see anywhere from 375 new hospital admissions a day to 1,000 a day.
Hospitals can surge in capacity, but “that ability for hospitals to be able to surge and open up additional beds is not endless,” Ghaly warned. There are only so many nurses and doctors available trained to do intensive care.
Case rates in several regions of the state have far exceeded levels seen since the summer months, the Times’ analysis found.
Over the past seven days, Southern California counties have reported 40 daily coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents averaged over a seven-day period. That’s almost 50 percent higher than the summer peak, which maxed out at 28 daily coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents in July. It’s even worse in the rural northern third of the state, where the case rate has skyrocketed to an average of 48 daily cases per 100,000 residents, up from an average of 12 daily cases in August.
Cases in the Sacramento region and Central Coast have risen 57 percent and 22 percent, respectively, above the highest levels seen in mid-August. The ninecounty San Francisco Bay Area reported 18 average daily cases per 100,000 residents, matching its summer peak.
Bay Area officials warned that the sharp jump in the region is in danger of maxing out hospital capacity.
“Even in our own county hospitals, we’re seeing a strain on ICU beds,” warned Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez.
As some of the nation’s busiest shopping days approach, officials in Silicon Valley said there would be a ramped-up enforcement effort to ensure crowds don’t form, stores adhere to capacity limits and people wear masks. Retailers can open at up to 25 percent of capacity in California counties in the most restrictive COVID-19 tier, in which 95 percent of Californians live.
Health officials have voiced grave concerns about reports of many people ignoring federal, state and local health recommendations to cancel travel plans for the holidays. Authorities fear substantial travel will cause coronavirus transmission to further worsen, just as it did in China for the Lunar New Year, which fueled the spread that brought the contagious virus to the rest of the world.