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Normally, the Super Bowl is one of the nation’s premier social occasions – bringing together fans and non-fans for hours of football-fueled festivities.
But in the era of COVID-19, officials and experts say Sunday’s game poses a huge risk and large surveillance teams could put California’s precarious emergence of the pandemic’s worst wave at risk. .
“Don’t fumble. We’re almost there, ”said Dr. Mark Ghaly, California Secretary of Health and Human Services. “Let’s keep our guards a little longer.”
The warning against Super Bowl parties is as much about avoiding the mistakes of the past as it is about avoiding future calamities. A big warning sign is the rise of the most contagious and possibly deadliest strain of the coronavirus first identified in Britain, B.1.1.7, which has seen tremendous growth in the county of San Diego, which has probably already resulted in one death there and accounts for nearly a quarter of known cases nationwide.
San Diego County on Wednesday reported at least 137 confirmed cases of variant B.1.1.7 and 50 probable cases. There were at least 611 confirmed cases of the variant reported nationwide on Thursday.
The UK variant is believed to be 50% to 70% more transmissible than the regular variety of the circulating coronavirus. Simulations presented by a UC San Diego scientist to government officials warn that even with a decent vaccination strategy, the average daily new coronavirus cases in San Diego County within two months could be twice as severe as the peak of the fall and winter soaring, overwhelming. the capacity of the hospital there, if residents again reject public health guidelines to wear masks and avoid gatherings like they did late last year.
Besides San Diego County, the British strain has also been identified in Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Alameda and San Mateo counties, including among two UC Berkeley students who recently arrived in the United States from overseas.
“If we let our guard down and end up having a lot of people in our house, inside, unmasked, screaming for our teams, then we can see a potential reversal of the downtrend and end up in a new wave. Said Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, medical epidemiologist and infectious disease expert at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.
The skyrocketing fall and winter in California has faded in part because more and more people have followed the rules of stay-at-home and there haven’t been any big holidays like Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and New Years recently.
“However, the Super Bowl could be an opportunity for this mix to happen again,” Kim-Farley said. And that’s why we need to make sure we get a message across: This Super Bowl is not the time to throw a big party. Wait until next year. “
While many factors fueled the horrific outbreak that hit the state from late October, officials said they believed people coming together to watch and celebrate the Dodgers and Lakers championship races had added fuel to the viral fire – particularly in southern California, which was hammered by an avalanche of new COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and, possibly, deaths.
The NBA Finals began on September 30 and the World Series ended on October 27, giving the Lakers their first championship in a decade and the Dodgers their first World Series title since 1988. The San Diego Padres have made the playoffs for the first time since 2006 and people gathered in homes and restaurants to cheer on their teams.
Days after the Dodgers knocked out the Padres from the playoffs on October 8, there were already warning signs that a push was possible. “We are here to sound the alarm,” San Diego County health official Dr. Wilma Wooten said on Oct. 16.
In LA County, the average daily number of reported cases – recorded by the onset of the disease or the first positive tests – exceeded 1,100 per day on October 12 for the first time since the end of August, when the California began to reopen after the summer surge.
“You can just go down Sunset [Boulevard], and you see all these restaurants that set up their televisions outside and there are dozens and dozens of people, eating and drinking … no masks, clapping, shouting, gathering, defying each other others, ”LA County Public Health director Barbara Ferrer said. “We looked at all of this and understood in our mind that it really contributed to what we were seeing.”
The highly contagious coronavirus spreads through respiratory particles emitted when people talk and breathe, and screaming and cheering – especially indoors but also a risk outdoors – dramatically increases the risk of transmission.
Rallies like this, along with those held during Halloween and Thanksgiving, were “the start of a wave that led to a lot of deaths in California, a really hard and dark time,” Ghaly said this week. As of October 15, more than 26,000 Californian deaths from COVID-19 have been reported, more than 60% of the cumulative number of COVID-19 deaths in California, or more than 43,000.
California has been forced to implement another round of home support orders and business closures that officials attribute to easing the severity of the latest outbreak and preventing state hospitals to be so overwhelmed that doctors would have been forced to ration hospital care.
As severe as California had its latest surge, neighboring Arizona – which has no statewide mask order and has kept indoor restaurants and bars open – has suffered a high per capita death rate. higher. If California had Arizona’s death rate, California would have a cumulative COVID-19 death toll of nearly 78,000.
The Super Bowl is regularly the most popular TV show of the year, and tens of millions of people typically attend private parties or congregate in crowded restaurants and bars to watch.
The director of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, urged Americans to watch the game between Kansas City and Tampa Bay with people “only virtually or with those with whom you live”. For those who still want to get together, the CDC suggested hosting an outdoor viewing party, watching the game on a projection screen, where people from different households can sit six feet or more.
LA County allows small private gatherings, but they must be held outdoors, with no more than three households and 15 people in attendance, and require physical distancing and the use of a mask when not eating or are not actively drinking.
The warnings from health officials follow the recent reopening of outdoor restaurants, which were closed across much of California for weeks as the winter wave of the coronavirus increased.
That ban was lifted last month, after the state revoked regional stay-at-home orders that were in place in southern California, the Bay Area and the San Joaquin Valley.
While undoubtedly a godsend for struggling businesses, the reopening is still a source of heartburn in some corners – particularly LA County, where health officials have long warned that, without proper precautions, outdoor dining rooms could set the stage for amplified transmission of the coronavirus, one claim. contested by many restoration players.
To combat the risk of outdoor viral transmission in restaurants, LA County officials have imposed a new ordinance for alfresco dining rooms requiring that “televisions or other screens showing programs must be left off until” see you again ”. Ventura County also recommends that businesses turn off their televisions over the weekend, but stopped ahead of an outright ban, according to a statement.
UC San Francisco epidemiologist Dr Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo said it was reasonable for LA County health officials to issue such an order.
“If I was in the public health field and wanted to know how to protect the public, I would say that being with people you don’t know, masked, yelling and clapping for football matches is inherently riskier. activity; and that eating outdoors, to the extent that it encourages this by turning on the televisions, will also be a risky set of activities, ”said Bibbins-Domingo. “I think it’s totally appropriate, given what we know about the transmission of the virus, what we know about human behavior, especially at sporting events.
Times editors Jaweed Kaleem and Ryan Menezes contributed to this report.
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