L.A. COUNTY REPORTS 8,880 NEW CORONAVIRUS CASES
Bay Area health officials issue stay-home order
Los Angeles County set another all-time record for daily coronavirus cases, recording more than 8,800 on Friday, as five Bay Area counties issued new stay-athome orders.
Los Angeles County’s tally marked a jump of more than 1,000 cases compared to Thursday, when 7,854 new cases were reported.
The hard-hit county has set a record with 2,668 people with COVID-19 currently hospitalized. Of those, nearly a quarter are in intensive care, where beds are rapidly filling up.
Over the last week, the state has averaged 17,007 new cases per day, according to data compiled by the Los Angeles Times. That’s a 61.6 percent increase from two weeks ago, and dwarfs even the darkest days of the summertime surge, when the rolling average never topped 10,000.
To put that number into perspective, 119,050 Californians have tested positive for the coronavirus in just the past seven days — almost the equivalent of everyone living in the city of Berkeley being infected.
With case numbers that are historically high and show no signs of relenting, California officials are turning their eyes toward the state’s hospital system, which they’ve long warned is at risk of being f looded by a wave of coronavirus patients.
Statewide, 8,831 Californians were hospitalized with a confirmed case as of Wednesday — an all-time high and nearly double the number seen two weeks ago. There are also more coronavirus-positive patients in intensive care — 2,066 — than ever before.
“The bottom line is if we don’t act now, our hospital system will be overwhelmed,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday.
Faced with COVID-19’s relentless acceleration, the state on Thursday pulled an emergency brake — announcing new and far-reaching restrictions tied to regional strains on critical care services.
So far, none of the regions has dipped below the stateset threshold of 15 percent of ICU capacity, though some counties have. As a result, Bay Area health officers — in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco and Santa Clara counties, as well as the city of Berkeley — announced Friday that they would proactively implement the additional restrictions, fearing hospitals would be overrun if they waited any longer.
“We don’t think we can wait for the state’s new restrictions to go into effect. This is an emergency,” Contra Costa Health Officer Chris Farnitano said.
The Bay Area counties are so closely connected that it was much easier to implement a regional order, officials said.
In Santa Clara County, health officer Sara Cody said the number of ICU beds filled with COVID-19 patients has tripled in the last month and continues to accelerate, setting a record for admissions Thursday. By Friday, there was just 14 percent of ICU capacity in the county of 2 million people.