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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) – A summer wave of coronavirus caused by the delta variant is again straining some California hospitals, especially in rural areas, but the trend is showing signs of moderation and experts predict an improvement in weeks to come.
The pattern is similar to the spikes in infection California experienced last summer and much more severely during the winter when intensive care units were overflowing. But this time, moderation comes without the shutdown orders that previously hampered California’s economy, businesses, and schools.
“We are hopeful, certainly,” state epidemiologist Dr Erica Pan said on Tuesday.
The state’s latest screening “looks encouraging whether we hit a plateau or a peak,” Pan said in an interview with The Associated Press. But she added that “the only thing we’ve learned” about COVID-19 is its unpredictability.
Severe cases continue to climb, with more than 8,200 patients in hospitals and nearly 2,000 in intensive care across California. One of the highest daily spikes in new hospital admissions only came last week, Pan noted.
Deaths have started to rise, and state models predict nearly 2,000 people will die in the next three weeks, adding to California’s death toll approaching 65,000, the highest in the country.
Epidemiological models of the state show the hospitalization rate is leveling off, peaking at around 9,300 hospitalizations around Labor Day before the numbers start to drop. Intensive care admissions are expected to follow the same pattern, peaking just below 2,200. At the worst of the pandemic in January, hospitalizations peaked at nearly 22,200 and intensive care admissions at nearly 5,000.
Importantly, the statewide infection rate has fallen 25% in the past three weeks, from a high of 7% of those tested to 5.2%.
“We’re hoping things will stabilize and we’ll be on the other side of this particular push pretty soon,” Pan said.
San Francisco and other areas with high vaccination rates are seeing a “definitive decline” as Los Angeles County begins to improve, said Dr Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at the University of Los Angeles. California to San Francisco.
This follows an epidemiological model from the UCSF which predicted that the current outbreak would peak in mid-August and that the state would return to a low number of cases by mid-September to the end of September, he said. she declared.
While various places reimposed indoor masking requirements after briefly lifting them last spring, this time health officials have avoided reinstating capacity limits or shutting down businesses. Still, California remains in much better shape than states like Florida and Texas which have seen hospitals inundated with cases of delta variants.
Gandhi said higher levels of immunity in the state, rather than broad lockdowns, made the difference this time around.
Vaccinations were just starting as the winter wave receded, but natural immunity also increases as the unvaccinated get sick and recover.
“All of this immunity drives down our cases in California,” Gandhi said.
She and other experts expect vaccination rates to increase as more employers mandate injections and proof of vaccination is required to participate in more activities.
Experts also expect some people to be more comfortable getting the vaccine after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved full approval of the Pfizer vaccine for people 16 and older.
About two-thirds of eligible Californians aged 12 and over are fully vaccinated, and an additional 10% have received their first vaccines. Areas with a higher number of new cases and hospitalizations tend to be areas with lower vaccination rates.
In Del Norte County, in the far northwest of the state, only 44% of eligible people received at least one injection, and there were an average of 170 new cases of COVID per 100,000 population last week. , an almost triple rate. any other county. Tuolumne, Kings, Yuba and Sutter counties all had rates above 50 new cases per 100,000. The state average is 28. All of these counties have vaccination rates. well below the state average.
But across the state, the rate at which each infected person spreads the disease, known as R-effective, has been steadily declining since mid-July. In many counties, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, it has fallen below one, meaning the number of people infected will decline.
The agricultural valley of San Joaquin remains a major concern in large part because the current push started there later and continues to increase, Pan said, “but we also hope the rate of increase will not be as faster than before “.
To help in hard-hit areas, the state is again demanding that hospitals with intensive care space accept patients with less capacity. It also still breaks the rules for out-of-state healthcare workers assisting in California on a contract basis.
Pan and California Hospital Association spokeswoman Jan Emerson-Shea said burnout is a growing problem for medical staff who have been battling the pandemic since early last year, especially with a group more restricted of traveling physicians and nurses due to large increases in other states.
Some counties are now seeing more hospitalizations than in either of the previous two outbreaks.
For example, Tuolumne County, near Yosemite National Park, had 22 hospital patients, double its peak in December. Lake County had double the number of patients, 20, as before.
The spread in rural areas reflects both low vaccination rates and the fact that many had remained relatively intact in previous outbreaks, said Dr Rajiv Bhatia, affiliate professor of medicine at Stanford University.
“In the big counties you don’t see a significant increase or a challenge – hospitals are not being challenged right now,” he said. “For me, the only interpretation of this is that the vaccine is effective in preventing serious disease, regardless of the variant.”
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