Alarming surge:
Cases in California top 33,000 for second straight day.
One day after California surpassed 20,000 COVID19 fatalities and the state reported a record 10,567 hospitalizations, public health figures forecast a grim scenario for the upcoming holiday season.
The coronavirus pandemic shows no sign of letting up as a surge of cases threatens to overwhelm the state’s hospitals.
“After you see a peak of cases, usually two weeks later you see a peak of hospitalizations, and a few weeks later you see deaths,” said Dr. Seema Jain, chief of disease investigations for the California Department of Public Health, during a virtual forum Tuesday hosted by the California Medical Association.
The alarming uptick in hospitalizations and deaths comes as the nation struggles with the ongoing pandemic, even as optimistic vaccine news promises to improve the situation. But mass inoculations are still months away, and the holiday season is sure to test the resolve of Bay Area residents who are sheltering in place — along with the health care professionals tasked with managing the crisis.
And that crisis appears to be at hand. The record number of hospitalizations in California represents a nearly 71% jump in two weeks. Intensive care unit hospitalizations increased by nearly 69% in the same period, reaching 2,417.
“Our highest number ever for COVID hospitalizations,” said Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state’s Health and Human Services secretary, during a news briefing Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the number of new coronavirus cases in California on Tuesday reached 34,638, breaking Monday’s alltimehigh of 34,491.
Over the past four days, five Bay Area counties reported recordbreaking case totals, including San Francisco, which registered 316 cases on Monday, and Santa Clara County, which recorded 1,450 cases.
The alarming local tallies come after nearly 800 deaths were reported in the state last week and 65 deaths in the Bay Area. Both state and local death tallies represent an approximate 80% increase over the previous week.
While Latino communities were hardest hit by COVID19 fatalities over the summer, the latest surge is hitting every age group and ethnicity in nearly every region of the state.
“The deaths mirror the cases,” said Dr. Kirsten BibbinsDomingo, a biostatistician at UCSF. “This is a surge that is widespread across all communities. Yes, the virus has disproportionately affected the Latino population, but it is not exclusive.”
A majority of deaths in California are occurring in those that are over 50 years old, according to state data, particularly those who are 65 and older. The state has a stunning 40% mortality rate for those over 80.
The median age of infections, meanwhile, is between 30 and 40 years old.
BibbinsDomingo said the high infection rate in younger people is driving the number of deaths in the older population, due to the highly contagious nature of the virus. “Even if we have better ways of caring for patients, we have more people who are infected, and we are going to have more deaths,” she said.
Publichealth officials are primarily concerned about running out of beds to care for patients, which led Gov. Gavin Newsom to issue a new, regional stayathome directive that, as of Monday, affects 33 million of the nearly 40 million residents of California.
The safety measure is structured to go into effect when a region of the state has less than 15% of its intensive care unit beds available. But six Bay Area counties enacted the stricter shutdown measures preemptively, hoping to avoid hospitals being forced to turn away patients.
It could still be too late. The Bay Area is averaging about 2,300 cases a day, while the positive test rate has risen to about 10% for the state, according to a Chronicle analysis.
California’s test positivity rate rose to 8.7% Tuesday, a 55% increase from the state’s 5.6% positivity rate on Nov. 24.
Those numbers are expected to grow exponentially, leading to worse outcomes in the weeks ahead. According to a state modeling forecast, California will likely top 21,550 deaths by Christmas.
“As our hospitals get full, there is a concern that people might make different decisions about who gets into a hospital,” said BibbinsDomingo. “You have a lower likelihood of being admitted into the hospital with COVID right now than you did a few months earlier.”
There is also concern that holiday gatherings could further fuel the crisis.
“We know that those cases that occurred around people’s dinner tables or activities and travel through Thanksgiving are going to show up right about now,” said Ghaly. “We believe that the levels of transmission that we’ve been reporting will likely continue to go up because of those activities around Thanksgiving.”
Ghaly on Tuesday praised the Bay Area counties that implemented preemptive shutdowns this week to protect hospitals from becoming overwhelmed with patients.
“I think it’s a recognition — I applaud this recognition — that the sooner some of these changes go into effect, the hope that the impact is greater and that we can shorten the time that these orders are in place,” he said.
In the Bay Area region, the availability of ICU beds as of Tuesday night was 24.5%. Throughout the state, hospitals saw an overall 72% increase in COVID19 patients.
“Our focus on that ICU capacity is one that we’re newly focused on,” Ghaly said. “We’ve always been attentive to it, but the critical focus on that now is because we are certainly worried that with so many patients with COVID being admitted ... that fragile but important system may be overwhelmed.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said Monday that he told California health authorities the state’s new stayhome protocols were necessary.
“When you reach a certain critical point of the flexibility of hospital beds, and you see more cases of COVID coming in, you could have a real challenge — and maybe even a crisis — with regard to beds and personnel to take care of the people in those beds,” Fauci said during an interview with CNN.
The issue is not limited to California. Deaths from COVID19 in the U. S. have soared to more than 2,200 a day on average, matching the frightening peak reached in April. Cases per day have eclipsed 200,000, on average, for the first time on record, with the crisis all but certain to get worse due to the holidays.
The nation now has more than 15 million confirmed coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The pace of spread has picked up rapidly.
It took 98 days to register the first 1 million cases in the country by April 28. This month, it took 5 days to go from 14 million cases to 15 million cases.
For now, public health leaders are asking for continued vigilance from state residents, despite the harsh new measures.
“People think a vaccine is on the way and this is all over with,” said UCSF Dr. Robert Rodriguez, a member of the BidenHarris coronavirus task force. “But, no, it’s not going to be over with. The risk is very, very real.”