[ad_1]
Even as the coronavirus outbreak in the Bay Area appeared to be leveling off, the United States took another grim milestone on Tuesday: 400,000 deaths.
At least 401,120 people in the United States died from the coronavirus on Tuesday afternoon, Johns Hopkins University reported – representing nearly 1 in 830 Americans.
The pace of deaths has also accelerated: it took about four months for the United States to register their first 100,000 deaths, but just over five weeks for the country to go from 300,000 to 400,000.
The hospital’s image in the Bay Area and the rest of California was a little more optimistic, however, as cases after the holidays and hospital overload appeared to be slowing down. The region reported an average of around 38 deaths per day over the past week, while the previous week reported an average of around 62 new deaths per day.
California has gone from more than 3,500 hospital admissions earlier this month to an average of 2,700 per day now, said Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of the state’s Department of Health and Human Services – a ” significant reduction, ”he said. The rate of transmission of the virus is also declining statewide, as is the rate of new cases of the virus in nursing homes.
Even though the peak of the outbreak appears to be over, “there is still a huge amount of COVID in our communities,” Ghaly said. The new L452R variant, which quickly spread to California, remains under study, he said, with the state working with UCSF and Scripps College and the federal government. “We know it was recently identified in several large outbreaks in Santa Clara County,” he said, and officials “are working to determine if this variant has an increase in infectivity, its impact on vaccinations. … These variations emphasize the need to keep our guard. “… It will certainly have an impact on how we move forward.
Vaccines remain another major area of concern. San Francisco’s vaccine supply – which goes to San Francisco General Hospital and city clinics that serve those who are insured or underinsured – could run out by Thursday if the city does not receive new shipments, the Mayor of London Breed said on Tuesday.
Private suppliers have a separate vaccine pipeline, and Breed added that the city’s supply constraint “should not have a significant impact” on plans to open a mass vaccination center at City College soon. .
San Francisco’s entire health system – including public and private providers – received 102,825 doses of the vaccine on Tuesday, Breed said. But these are supposed to count as both the first and second doses. There are approximately 210,000 people in San Francisco eligible for the vaccine under the first tier of the California distribution system.
Dr Grant Colfax, the city’s senior public health official, said the city had received 8,000 doses of the Moderna batch that the state had recommended not to be administered pending further studies, following a wave of allergic reactions from the lot of Petco Park, the Padres’ stadium in San Diego.
“We stopped on these out of caution,” he said. “We did not receive any replacement dose.”
Santa Clara County Public Health Officer Dr Sara Cody said the county had received “just over 21,000” of the doses of Moderna reviewed, which were to be distributed by the county, Stanford Health Care and El Camino hospital. None were given.
Ghaly said a vaccine safety committee was meeting on Tuesday to determine if the lot is safe, and “we think we’ll come to a resolution soon.”
San Francisco expects to receive another shipment of 1,775 doses this week, health officials said, but each of these has already been claimed – and that compares to the 12,000 doses received last week.
On Tuesday morning, San Francisco launched a website to let people know when it’s their turn to get vaccinated. Some said they experienced problems and accidents – which the city attributed to “high volume of visits”. It seemed to be working again around 1 p.m.
Cody of Santa Clara County said supply uncertainties made it “impossible for the county to plan in advance for vaccine distribution.” She added: “It is likely that future allocations will not distinguish between a first and a second dose.”
At the state level, Ghaly said California may have roughly hit its goal of vaccinating 1 million people in 10 days over the weekend. About 1,525,815 doses had been administered on Tuesday. On Friday, the largest number of vaccines were administered in the state in one day at 110,505 doses.
The entire Bay Area remains under order to stay at home. Asked when this might end in San Francisco, Colfax said, “We have encouraging signs that case rates are starting to drop and hospitalizations are starting to level off. … If this trend continues, I predict that we will come out of this stay-at-home state.
Monica Gandhi, infectious disease specialist at UCSF, said the region had avoided the worst predictions regarding high hospitalizations and attributed the Bay Area’s relative success compared to the rest of the state to setting early implementation of lockouts and its compliant residents.
But, she warned, that compliance could have an expiration date if officials don’t put an end date on the region’s strict lockdowns.
California crossed the 3 million case mark on Tuesday, which means that about 7.6% of Californians have contracted a coronavirus infection since the start of the pandemic.
Chronicle editors Trisha Thadani and Aidin Vaziri contributed.
Michael Williams is a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected]
[ad_2]
Source link