COVID surge waning but could tick up in summer
Coronavirus cases are continuing to level off or decline across the Bay Area as the spring surge appears to be winding down, though health officials note that the amount of virus in the community is still astonishingly high and the arrival of new variants could prolong the current wave well into summer.
The Bay Area reported a seven-day average of just under 3,000 coronavirus cases a day as of Thursday, according to the most recent state data. That’s down about 30% from the start of the month and the first time the daily average has dropped below 3,000 since mid-May.
Statewide the picture is a little murkier, with cases swinging up and down every few days over the past three weeks. As of Thursday, the state was reporting about 13,500 cases a day on average, down about 8% from the start of the month.
But cases are significantly underreported due to so many people now testing at home — results of which are not usually recorded with the state or counties — or not testing at all. Bay Area health officials believe the peak of this surge approached the height of the omicron-fueled winter surge, which was the largest wave of the pandemic yet.
“The good news is we do see some signs of leveling off or even decline. But it’s still high,” said Dr. Sara Cody, the Santa Clara County health officer, in a news briefing Friday. “Put your mask on when you’re indoors.”
Seven of the nine Bay Area counties — all except San Francisco and San Mateo — remain in the “high” community level of COVID as defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which takes into account local case rates and hospital capacity.
At that level, health care systems may be under stress due to high patient loads, and all residents are advised to wear masks in indoor public spaces. In the Bay Area, only Alameda County currently requires masking in most indoor places.
On Thursday, the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 in the Bay Area fell from the previous Thursday — the first week-over-week drop in nearly two months. But aside from that decline, COVID hospitalizations were still rising over the past week, though at a slower pace compared to earlier this month and last.
COVID deaths have ticked up slightly over the past week, though they remain very low. The Bay Area currently is reporting five or six deaths a day, up from two to four deaths a day recorded for most of the past two months.
Unlike the omicron surge that quickly spiked to previously unimaginable case counts and then plunged to relatively low levels, this wave may take many weeks longer to taper off, health experts said. That’s due in large part to new variants — specifically, the omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, which together now make up roughly 20% of cases — taking hold in the region and potentially slowing the downward trend in cases or even causing a new upswing.
“This is one surge that I would describe as having a long tail: It doesn’t go down sharply all of a sudden, it’s kind of lingering with us,” said Stephen Shortell, former dean of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. “I don’t anticipate any sharp upsurges in the next few months. On the other hand, it may not go totally down as much as it has in the past.”
Human behavior may also prolong this surge, said Dr. John Swartzberg, a UC Berkeley infectious disease expert. He noted that people don’t appear to be using masks as much during this surge as they did in previous waves, and many haven’t altered their behavior in other ways, such as by skipping indoor activities and avoiding large crowds.
“There’s some cognitive dissonance in that there’s an awful lot of COVID going around and people are acting like there’s not,” Swartzberg said.
Still, he said he’s feeling generally more hopeful compared to any other time in the pandemic. “I refuse to allow myself to be optimistic about what this virus is going to do,” he said, noting the likelihood of future variants stirring up more trouble in the fall and winter. “But I’m more optimistic now about what we can do against it.”