Signs of hope in curbing spread
Cases, hospitalizations drop for 1st time in weeks
SACRAMENTO — Three weeks after Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered a retreat from the coronavirus and reinstated statewide shutdowns for much of the economy, it appears the plan is working: California’s outbreak is showing signs of slowing down.
Newsom rang cautiously optimistic at a news briefing in Sacramento County on Monday, noting that case counts and hospitalizations are dropping for the first time in several weeks. The percentage of people testing positive — a key indicator of the outbreak — is trending down too.
The state continues to see far more disease now than even a month ago, and the death toll is still climbing, public health experts noted. But it appears the decision to pause reopening in much of the state and implore the public to wear face coverings and
avoid gatherings is paying off.
“We’ll need to see another few weeks of this kind of data ... to feel more confident about where we are as a state,” Newsom said. “It’s encouraging. At the same time, we can quickly find ourselves back to where we were just a few weeks ago, a month ago, with significant increases if we do not maintain our vigilance. This virus is not going away.”
Daily new cases are down about 21% over the past two weeks — from an average of about 9,800 a day to 7,800, Newsom said. Hospitalizations have fallen 10% in the same time, with about 6,400 people currently in the hospital, including 1,940 in intensive care. The state has reported just over 520,000, including 7,673 on Monday.
The percentage of people testing positive has dropped to an average of 7% over the past 14 days, from 7.5% last week. Public health experts generally say a rate of 5% or less is needed to gain control of the pandemic’s spread.
“A 20% decrease (in cases) in the state is nothing to sneeze at,” said George Rutherford, a UCSF infectious disease expert. “Now we pat ourselves on the back and do more of what we’ve been doing.”
The state improvements are apparent in the Bay Area, too, where average daily new cases fell about 29% last week from the week before — from about 1,000 a day to 700. The Bay Area has reported about 56,000 cases in all, including 533 on Monday.
California reflects the broad U.S. picture, with cases declining nationally over the past week. The highest single day so far was July 24, with more than 78,000 cases, and daily reports have stayed between about 58,000 and 70,000 since then.
Public health experts echoed the governor’s caution, although they welcomed the most recent data. The new case reports and hospitalization numbers are still alarmingly high, they said, and nowhere near what the state and counties need to see to regain control of the outbreak.
Also, the recent numbers are still fresh and could trend up again — an especially important lesson after overconfidence and subsequent relaxing of behaviors, like mask wearing and social distancing, contributed to the recent swell of cases.
Plus, the death toll is continuing to climb. That’s not surprising, since deaths lag the case reports and hospitalizations by a week or two, but it’s nonetheless sobering, public health experts said. California reported 801 deaths last week — the most in any week so far in the pandemic. More than 9,500 Californians have died of COVID19.
Newsom credited measures California has taken in the past month for the statewide declines, including ordering several business sectors to shut back down. Rutherford and other experts agreed. They noted that case counts and other measures of the pandemic lag two to three weeks behind the actual spread of the virus, and so it’s to be expected that now — three weeks after Newsom paused the economic reopening — the results would be apparent in the data.
“I’m not yet ready to say that the governor dialed things down to the perfect place. But I think we’re seeing the effects of his efforts three weeks ago,” said John Swartzberg, an infectious disease expert with UC Berkeley. “Is it going to be enough? If things continue like this, I think yes. I was worried that if we didn’t see something significant in a week or two that we’d be locked down again.”
Newsom warned that the state cannot take its progress for granted, saying lax behaviors led to the June and July surge in cases. “Let’s not relive that experience again,” he said.
The governor added that while much of the state has seen improvement, there are still emerging hot spots in the Central Valley, where new cases have surged, especially among agricultural workers and Latino households. Positive test rates and hospitalizations also are climbing there.
Last week, the state put in place measures that Newsom said helped reduce infection rates in hardhit Imperial County, including deploying “strike forces” of inspectors to enforce health orders and helping infected people quarantine from people close to them.
“Disproportionately, this disease is impacting our diverse communities,” Newsom said. “That’s why our targeted interventions, disproportionately, are focusing on essential workforce, on farmworkers, on critical workforce.”
Although cases are dropping nationally, there are troubling signs that the virus is spreading in some states that so far have escaped the worst of it, continuing a trend in this pandemic of outbreaks surfacing in previously unburdened areas just as it appears to be slackening off in others.
In a virtual interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association on Monday, Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said the U.S. needs to push its daily case counts down well below 20,000 — possibly under 10,000 — to maintain control of the virus. Over the past month, several states, including California, have reported more than 10,000 cases alone in a day.
Stomping on that daily case count is especially critical with the flu season on the horizon, Fauci said.
“We’re right in the middle of the first wave here. We’re having surging of cases, anywhere between 60,000 and 70,000 a day, a thousand deaths,” Fauci said. “If we don’t get them down, we’ll have a very bad situation in the fall.”
“We’ll need to see another few weeks of this kind of data ... to feel more confident about where we are as a state.” Gov. Gavin Newsom