Hospitalizations: Bay Area and entire state seeing declines in key indicator in the pandemic.
The number of people hospitalized for COVID19 has been declining in the Bay Area and statewide since late July, a promising sign that suggests the worst of the coronavirus surge may be over.
Statewide, hospitalizations have fallen about 19% in the last two weeks, to 5,596 as of Sunday, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday. Similarly, the number of COVID patients in intensive care has also declined, down 13% to 1,727 during the same period.
“Those are both strong indicators that the epidemic surge that we experienced more than a month ago has now slowed down,” said Dr. George Lemp, a retired University of California epidemiologist. “At least we’re moving in the right direction in California.”
Newsom cautioned that it is too early to declare victory against the virus, calling the recent drop in hospitalizations “an encouraging sign, but not the kind of stability, longterm decline that we ultimately need to get to where everybody wants to go.”
Locally, COVID hospitalizations have followed a similar downward trajectory since late July. Bay Area counties mostly saw hospitalizations peak the last week of July, before gradually declining or flattening.
San Francisco, for instance, saw hospitalizations peak on
July 28 and July 30, when hospitals reported 114 COVID patients, according to county data. That number has fallen relatively steadily since then, reaching 86 on Saturday, a roughly 25% decline compared to the peak.
Alameda County reported a similar decline during the same period. At its peak on July 28, 213 people were hospitalized with COVID19. That number has since fallen to 163 people — a 23% drop, according to county data.
“While we are hopeful that this decline in hospitalizations signals improvement in COVID19 transmission in Alameda County, given residual uncertainty about laboratory result reporting from the state, it is too soon to tell,” said Neetu Balram, public information manager for the Alameda County Public Health Department.
State officials last week disclosed flaws in the COVID data reporting system, called CalREDIE, that likely led to an underreporting of new coronavirus cases, though it is unclear how many cases were not reported correctly.
The number of new coronavirus cases began to flatten and taper off statewide and in many Bay Area counties a few weeks ago, a sign that the closures and restrictions that health officials reimposed when a summer surge began taking hold of the region in Juneare working. The subsequent decline in hospitalizations tracks with the lag time between new cases and hospitalizations. It often takes at least a couple of weeks before people with symptoms end up in the hospital.
Despite the apparent slowdown, new cases are still being reported. Santa Clara County recorded 751 new cases on Monday, by far the largest singleday increase for the county. That figure, however, includes cases dating back to July 8 that had not been previously included because of the CalREDIE error.
Statewide, 12,431 new cases were reported as of Monday night. That is the largest singleday increase for the state, but the number is likely unusually high because it includes previously underreported cases from July. The
Bay Area reported 1,419 new cases Monday, and six deaths, bringing the region’s total to 63,740 cases and 919 deaths.
Altogether, California has had 574,123 cases and 10,473 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
The CalREDIE glitch cast doubt on the accuracy of new cases starting from midJuly on. But the data problem did not affect the way the state reports hospitalizations, officials said.
“Given what we’re seeing with hospitalizations, it’s pretty clear that we’re in a different phase,” Lemp said. “We’re not only (at) a plateau, but somewhat of a decline.”
To maintain the slowdown, officials should continue limiting indoor dining and bars, and businesses that remain open, like grocery stores, should enforce rigorous mask wearing and sanitize surfaces, Lemp said. It will take a collective effort to tamp down infections to levels low enough to trace where infections began and how they spread — a process known as contact tracing, which has eluded public health officials because the virus is spreading faster than the testing system and contact tracing efforts can track.
“Once we’ve got these numbers lower, we want push them down even more,” he said. “If we can really drop the numbers down, maybe we can get a handle on contact tracing.”