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Despite rising rates of coronavirus cases in other parts of the country, California continues to see its metrics trending down.
At least for now.
Even though the state’s numbers remain comparatively positive, officials urge caution – saying California can’t afford to see its progress reversed so soon after emerging from its own gruesome wave of the fall and winter.
Los Angeles County Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer said the high number of cases elsewhere should be of particular concern because what happens elsewhere in the country is likely to have consequences for California.
And with much of the state unlocking more businesses and other long-term activities, the stakes remain high – and the danger of increased transmission remains real.
Californian trends
Over the past week, the state reported an average of 2,766 new coronavirus cases per day, a 35% decrease from two weeks ago, according to data compiled by The Times.
Statewide, 2,586 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized on Monday; 635 were in intensive care. Both figures are back to levels not seen since the last outbreak began in California.
The number of newly reported COVID-19 deaths also continues to decline but has not yet fallen to pre-outbreak levels. On average, 183 Californians have died from the disease each day over the past week, and the state’s total death toll has exceeded 57,200.
California’s seven-day case rate per 100,000 population on Tuesday was among the lowest in the country, at 46.8, according to the CDC. The only states with better rates were Arizona, 46.1, Oregon, 45.5, and Hawaii, 37.
Case rates over the same period were 319.2 in New Jersey, 311.1 in New York, 222.1 in the rest of New York State, 162.8 in Pennsylvania, 143.9 in Florida and 91.6 in Texas.
The most recent nationwide case rate was 116.1.
But just because California is doing well doesn’t mean it’s time to celebrate, Ferrer warned.
“The past year indicates that the East Coast often sees an increase in cases before the West Coast and that generally LA County is a few weeks behind New York,” she told council on Tuesday. county surveillance. “Although conditions have definitely changed, especially since we have vaccinated millions of people in the past three months, we do not yet have enough vaccine protection across the country to prevent further transmission if we are not being overly cautious in the coming weeks. “
National warnings
Officials across California and the country stress that residents must remain vigilant to avoid another wave. This is especially true as more regions lift restrictions linked to the pandemic – a delicate process that experts say can easily go wrong.
Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday that “the continued relaxation of prevention measures while cases are still high and variants are spreading rapidly across the States – United is a serious threat to the progress we have made as a nation.
“Believe me, I understand” she said during a briefing. “We all want to get back to our daily activities and spend time with our family, friends and loved ones, but we have to find the courage to stay a little longer. We are at a critical juncture in this pandemic, a fork in which we, as a country, must decide which path we are going to take. We must act now. And I fear that if we don’t take the right steps now, we will have another preventable surge – just as we are seeing now in Europe and as we are so aggressively scaling up vaccination. “
Ferrer agreed.
“Everyone is exhausted by this pandemic and the restrictions, but we don’t want to do anything that allows our community transmission rates to easily pick up,” she said. “Not only is it a disaster all around, because then we just have more community transmission, and that translates to more epidemics in newly reopened places, like schools, but it’s also a disaster because this allows a variant a lot more opportunities to become dominant. “
The vaccine race
In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic has turned into a race against time, with health officials pushing to vaccinate as many people as possible as quickly as possible.
California expects to receive around 1.8 million doses this week – a slight increase from last week’s allocation, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
But weekly shipments of this size are not enough to keep up with the state’s vaccination rate.
Over the past seven days, providers statewide have administered an average of 378,115 doses per day, according to data from The Times.
Overall, more than 15.1 million doses of the vaccine – about 78% of the supply that was provided to local public health units and medical providers – were administered statewide, according to the department. of California Public Health.
And many officials are optimistic that vaccine distribution could be significantly expanded in the near future.
Earlier this month, President Biden said restrictions on who can make an appointment for a COVID-19 vaccine would be lifted across the country by May 1, when the supply is expected to be sufficient. to answer the question.
And Newsom said on Friday that state officials plan to be able to make the footage available to everyone “within five and a half weeks … because the supply will increase exponentially.”
A key factor in widely expanding access will be the availability of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine – which, unlike other products by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, requires only one injection.
Shipments of this vaccine, however, have been blocked by production problems. LA County, for example, plans to receive just about 6,000 doses of Johnson & Johnson this week.
While officials are confident that a wider supply stream is on the horizon, they said the coming weeks will be critical to finally fending off COVID-19.
In the upcoming spring break season, “we’ll all need to avoid large gatherings, crowds and non-essential travel,” Ferrer said. “These actions have had disastrous consequences for our community in the past. Our common goal is to keep each other alive so that everyone can get vaccinated and have an extra layer of protection. “
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