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California has again recorded its highest number of coronavirus cases in a single day amid a continuing and alarming wave of infections that threaten to overwhelm hospitals statewide.
The number of newly confirmed infections reported Monday, 21,848, exceeds the previous high of 20,654 set a week ago, according to data compiled by The Times. The latest figure was partially inflated by delays over the Thanksgiving holiday.
As of Monday night, California was averaging 14,000 cases of coronavirus per day over a seven-day period – a level never seen at any time in the entire pandemic.
The new record marks a painful end to a month that has seen the resurgence of the pandemic booming to unprecedented heights in California. About 298,000 of the state’s more than 1.2 million coronavirus cases were diagnosed in November alone, the better part of a month.
California’s recent numbers, while unprecedented, remain lower than many other states after adjusting for population. Over the past seven days, California has recorded an average of 37.1 new cases per day per 100,000 population – tied for the 15th lowest score among all states, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While some of the state’s exponential growth has come from the ramping up of testing, officials say the rate of tests coming back positive has also increased – demonstrating that the coronavirus is increasingly prevalent.
The statewide 14-day positivity rate rose to 6.5%, a marked increase from what it was about two weeks earlier, 4.7%.
“This rate of growth of cases, as well as the rate of positivity, is concerning,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a briefing Monday.
Policymakers and public health officials are concerned about how the skyrocketing number of infections will ultimately affect hospitals in California.
State health officials have estimated that 12% of those who have tested positive for the virus are hospitalized two to three weeks later – meaning the recent high number of cases would push even more people into the virus. professional health system.
This is a particularly distressing possibility, given that the number of COVID-19 patients in California hospitals is already increasing at an unprecedented rate.
The average net increase in the number of people hospitalized in California with COVID-19 is now around 333 patients per day over the past week, according to an analysis from The Times. The acceleration is twice as bad as the summer surge, which saw the average net increase in hospitalizations peak at 173 patients per day over a week at the end of June.
Officials are closely monitoring the capacity of the California intensive care unit. According to figures Newsom presented on Monday, about 75% of the state’s 7,733 intensive care beds are occupied – including 1,812 occupied by coronavirus patients.
Given the way things are going, the state could exhaust its existing intensive care capacity by mid-December, Newsom said.
Rural counties in northern California could overtake ICU capacity in early December, southern California and the San Joaquin Valley in mid-December, the Sacramento area in late December and the Bay Area in early January.
Providing care at the intensive care unit level usually involves “specialized space, specialized equipment and specialized personnel” – meaning that while hospitals can expand their capacities, their capacity to do so is not endless, according to Dr. Mark Ghaly, California Secretary of Health and Human Services. .
The bottom line is that we see the capacity of intensive care units as the main trigger for deeper and more restrictive actions, “he said on Monday, such as” when that capacity wears off or even when it is so stressed. that the staffing is depleted, that we must have made a space that is not generally used for intensive care units, we know that the quality of care … takes a dip sometimes, and we see results that we do not want to see ‘because the resources are evenly distributed thin.
Overall, 8,240 coronavirus patients were hospitalized statewide on Monday, according to the latest available data. This is more than triple the hospitalization rate on November 2, when there were 2,602.
It is also the highest number recorded during the pandemic and on the third day in a row, the record for COVID-19 hospitalizations was broken.
The overall figure only tells part of the story, however. Given California’s huge and geographically dispersed population, the coronavirus is harming different parts of the state’s health care system.
“Some counties in California don’t have a hospital themselves, certainly don’t have a lot of intensive care beds, so they depend on regional networks of hospitals, different systems coming together,” Ghaly said. “So we are looking at this from a regional basis … because what matters is if a patient needs care and he cannot receive it in a hospital in his community, in his county. , then we have to make sure that the surrounding counties “hospitals can serve these people.”
As the surge in new confirmed cases continues, officials warn they may need to resort to drastic restrictions to change the course of the state.
These could include a new home stay order for areas of the strictest purple level of California’s coronavirus reopening system, according to Newsom.
Details as to when such an order can be issued, or the precise form it would take, remain scarce at this point – although Newsom has promised: “We will release additional information, additional recommendations in the very, very near future. . . “
While the notion of a stay-at-home order is reminiscent of the rapid and widespread lockdown of businesses and public spaces seen at the start of the pandemic, state officials said they were working to be more specific in their approach this time.
“One of the most important things we’ve learned is that we can not only be more surgical with what we’re doing, but we can really prescribe it for a shorter or different length of time,” Ghaly said. “In the beginning, some of these orders were really unlimited; we weren’t sure. Today we know that we can reliably achieve the impact of certain interventions faster, and that is part of what we envision.
While many local officials and residents have pushed the state to be even more targeted – catering restrictions and enforcement efforts towards specific sectors or even individual businesses and facilities that the data shows are a source spread – Ghaly said transmission of the coronavirus is so widespread that “everyone is somewhat vulnerable to meeting an infected person.”
“Everyone wants us to identify the area where the spread is happening, and the truth is, when you have that level of community spread, it happens in our communities, first and foremost,” he said. he declares. “So, as soon as you walk through the door of any entity inside, the chance of meeting someone with COVID who can actually transmit it is higher than it’s ever been.
While the possibility of additional shutdowns may increase levels of resentment, officials stressed that there was light at the end of the tunnel – including the potentially imminent arrival of a vaccine.
Newsom said California expects to receive about 327,000 doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine in the coming weeks.
While this is not a silver bullet – as widespread rollout to the general public is still likely in months – officials said the prospect of even a limited number of doses was still a silver lining.
“Our most vulnerable could be getting vaccinated, our frontline health workers could get vaccinated in just a few weeks, paving the way for so many more people receiving this important tool to protect us,” he said. Ghaly said.
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