CDC urges caution as infections rise in U.S.
But California, Bay Area see drop, ease restrictions
After more than a month of plunging coronavirus cases nationally, the numbers have started to flatten and even creep back up, prompting a grim warning from U.S. public health leaders Friday to remain cautious in the coming weeks.
The situation was brighter in California and the Bay Area, where cases and hospitalizations continue to fall and counties have begun easing public health restrictions. And the grim national briefing was offset Friday afternoon by a key federal advisory group recommending the Johnson & Johnson vaccine for emergency authorization. The Food and Drug Administration
was expected to grant authorization as early as Friday night.
Taken together, the national, state and local reports underscored the precarious state of the pandemic even as vaccinations ramp up.
“The latest data suggests these declines may be stalling, potentially leveling off at still a very high number,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a White House briefing Friday morning. “We at CDC consider this a very concerning risk in the trajectory,”
She cautioned that a more transmissible variant of the virus first detected in Britain, along with emerging variants in New York and California that also appear to spread more easily, may become dominant in the country by midMarch and could already be causing the recent upticks.
“We may now be seeing the beginning effects of these variants in the most recent data,” Walensky said. She added that “things are tenuous” with the pandemic, and stressed caution reopening the economy. The current numbers remain higher than peaks hit last summer and spring.
“Now is not the time to relax restrictions,” Walensky said.
Despite the concerning trends nationwide, California is making gains against the coronavirus. Cases are continuing to decline, though at a somewhat less aggressive pace than earlier in the month. The state has reported about 5,500 cases a day this week, down about 20% from the previous week. Bay Area cases are down 16%, to about 770 cases a day this week. Nationally, cases have climbed above 70,000 a day over the past three days, an uptick from several days in the 55,000 to 65,000 range.
California counties are beginning to open up parts of the economy and loosen some restrictions. Indoor dining has resumed in San Mateo and Marin counties in the Bay Area, and San Francisco and Santa Clara County officials have said they expect to enter the less restrictive red tier next week and plan to reopen indoor restaurants then.
Fortyseven of the state’s 58 counties — accounting for 96% of the population — are in the most restrictive purple tier. Gov. Gavin Newsom said during a briefing Friday that eight more counties likely would move to the less restrictive red tier next week.
“This is happening very, very quickly,” Newsom said. “It’s a point of real optimism. We really are seeing that bright light at the end of the tunnel because of all of your hard work.”
San Francisco public health officials said in a statement Friday that they would continue to closely monitor cases as they reopen parts of the economy, and that they expected some increases in numbers as more activities resume. Santa Clara County officials said the benefits of partially reopening outweigh the risks at this point, with cases continuing to decrease. They, too, said they would closely watch case and hospitalization numbers.
Dr. George Rutherford, an infectious disease expert at UCSF, said that with case counts and other metrics still improving after the long winter surge, some reopening in the Bay Area is acceptable.
“What the state is proposing seems to be prudent and the Bay Area public health departments are going with it,” he said, noting three main factors are making people comfortable with the slow reopening: the vaccine, continued social distancing and maskwearing, and naturally acquired immunity in hardhit communities.
But despite the encouraging drop in cases, Rutherford echoed Walensky’s comments and said Californians should not relax too much and let down their guard.
“Vaccines are a miracle, but they’re a slowmoving miracle. We’re not going to be out of the woods until we get all of the population vaccinated,” he said. “Until then and even for a little while after that, we need to follow the public health guidance around masks and social distancing.”
Dr. John Swartzberg, an infectious disease expert at UC Berkeley, took an even more cautious tone. He noted that the sevenday average for new coronavirus cases in the Bay Area appears to have leveled off over the past few days, a potentially worrisome sign that the recent dropoffs are over and cases are stabilizing at a high rate.
“I’m not going to say it’s of concern, but it’s something we need to keep our eye on,” he said. Counties base their plans to reopen on two weeks of data, which is part of the state’s strategy to ensure that cases are trending in the right direction, “so if this (leveling off ) continues it’s going to make them pause and it should make them pause,” Swartzberg said.
Swartzberg also emphasized the importance of this next month in terms of making significant headway against the virus. He advised that more people get vaccinated before counties reopen further, especially with variants that appear to be more infectious now circulating widely. More than half of cases in most California counties are now caused by a new homegrown variant, according to recent studies.
“We’re in a race with the variants. We want to get as many people vaccinated as possible so the variants can’t have a major effect in terms of the cases of people getting infected,” Swartzberg said. “That’s why the health departments should just try to keep the lid on things for another month. The vaccine’s going to be pretty available to everyone in April.”
On Friday, state officials said they are working to consolidate vaccinations under a single state system. Starting Monday, vaccine eligibility will be the same across all counties, said Yolanda Richardson, secretary of government operations. That means teachers, for instance, will be eligible to get vaccinated in all counties, she said.
Throughout the month of March, the state will try to make MyTurn, the state online portal and phone appointment signup system, to be the one “front door” for people to book vaccination appointments, officials said.
Also starting Monday, California will offer counties a threeweek preview of the number of vaccine doses they can expect, Newsom said. He anticipated a boost in supply pending federal authorization of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine — potentially more than 380,000 doses as early as next week.
“There is bright light at the end of the tunnel,” Newsom said.