Flattening COVID-19 numbers brings hope to California

Despite hospitals overflowing with patients, the heartbreaking death toll and COVID-19 infection rates hovering at dangerous levels, there are signs that the daily increase in the number of coronavirus cases is starting to flatten in California.

It may take a few more days or weeks to be sure of the trend – and the flattening could be reversed if people relax more on mask wear and social distancing. But a number of local and state officials are expressing cautious optimism that the rampant daily and exponential worsening of the pandemic is slowing.

Gov. Gavin Newsom described the flattening numbers as “light at the end of the tunnel,” adding that the positive rate of coronavirus tests and the number of people in hospitals and intensive care units with COVID-19 have declined.

“We have seen encouraging signs,” Newsom said. “But now, more than ever, it behooves us not to let our guard down, not to leave our masks on and to make sure that we are doing everything in our power to maintain this rigor in the determination to work our way to through yet another push. “

Even in hard-hit Los Angeles County, there were glimmers on Friday that the crisis might not get worse, at least for now. But conditions in hospitals are so dire that officials say there is not much to celebrate, and there are still fears things will get worse quickly.

“It’s hard to know what to do with a bump one day [and] a slightly lower number another day, ”said Dr. Paul Simon, scientific director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. “I hope we are leveling off. We are unfortunately capping at a very, very high level. … This is a far too high level of community spread. “

In LA County, the average daily number of coronavirus cases over a weekly period soared to one of its highest numbers in the pandemic – at 15,102 for the seven-day period that ended Wednesday. But on Friday night, the county averaged about 14,600 cases per day over a weekly period. On Friday, a Times tally revealed 14,557 reported cases in LA County.

California hit one of its worst daily average numbers of new coronavirus cases on Sunday – nearly 45,000 cases per day, the second-highest figure in the pandemic. But since then, the number has stopped increasing and hovers between 41,000 and 44,000 cases per day.

The last time California had a record number of COVID-19 hospital patients was on January 6, surpassing 21,936. The last record number of the most COVID-19 patients in the ICU was on Sunday, with 4,868 in USI.

As of Thursday, there were 20,998 people with COVID-19 in hospitals in California, including 4,745 in ICUs.

Dr Mark Ghaly, Secretary of State for Health and Human Services, said in an interview this week that recent relative improvements in pandemic trends are a sign that regional home support orders have started to be put in place. about six weeks ago. working.

There is no assurance that there still won’t be a significant surge in the coming weeks, but there is a bit more optimism that the recent surge has been “blunt … compared to what we were getting ready, ”Ghaly said.

But it could only be a momentary bright spot as officials voice concern over a more contagious variant of the coronavirus, first identified in Britain in September, which is expected to circulate more widely in California and could quickly become the dominant variety by March.

Preliminary studies suggest it’s about 50% more transmissible than the conventional variety, and if more people are infected, hospitalizations will get worse and more people will die. It has already been identified in the counties of San Diego and San Bernardino.

“We’re very concerned about this variant because we’ve seen what happened in England, where it went from a relatively infrequent source of infection in early autumn to … being the predominant strain in the south-east of England, ”said Simon.

Los Angeles County officials did not release additional information on Friday on whether they would issue new orders to prevent the spread of the disease. Parameters that could be further considered include outdoor gymnasiums, which have been allowed to open at 50% of capacity, and indoor malls and shops, which are expected to be open at only 20% of capacity, have Mayor Eric Garcetti said Thursday night.

Simon acknowledged that the public is exhausted from fighting the pandemic. And “we have seen in recent months less adherence to our restrictions. … We can put in place additional restrictions, but unless they are followed, they will not have the desired impact. “

“I think our biggest hope, to be honest, is to deploy this vaccine as quickly as possible. We are working hard to achieve this and to continue to implore people to respect our restrictions as much as possible, ”he said.

Even though people cannot adhere to all the restrictions all the time, Simon said, he urged people to adhere to them as much as possible. For example, official LA County guidelines prohibit people-to-people gatherings outside your home. But he also said taking a stroll outside with a few friends who have also stayed at home – with everyone wearing masks and keeping themselves physically away from each other – is likely a safe activity.

“We just don’t want you to get together in big groups,” he said. “We recognize the pain of social isolation that has just been overwhelming. … We are just urging people to hang on. We are, I think, on a positive path with the vaccine.

The fact that the vaccines were found to be 95% effective, said Simon, “is almost like a miracle.”

The daily death toll in California remains extraordinarily high. The state reported a record number of COVID-19 deaths in a single day on Friday – 700, according to a health jurisdiction tally by The Times, breaking the record of 685 on Jan.8.

California currently has an average of 536 reported deaths per day over the past week, a record high, and roughly the equivalent of one death every three minutes. Nearly 33,000 Californians with COVID-19 have died in this pandemic.

LA County reported 260 deaths on Friday. The county has recorded an average of 233 deaths a day over the past week, one of the highest numbers in the pandemic.

Southern California hospitals continue to struggle with horrific overcrowding. In Los Angeles County, hospital morgues are so full that 16 members of the California National Guard have been called in to help store corpses as funeral homes and mortuaries work with a backlog. On Tuesday, the LA County coroner was holding about 150 bodies among people who died from COVID-19.

Riverside County also provided additional storage space to store the bodies – 10 refrigerated trailers, eight of which can store 50 bodies per trailer.

The reasons for the delays are complex. Sometimes families take longer to make decisions “because they hope they can wait a bit, and maybe be able to reunite, bring in family,” said Shane Reichardt, spokesperson. Riverside County Emergency Management Department. “There are financial problems. … People are struggling financially for a number of reasons, many of which are related to COVID. “

There were so many people with COVID-19 in Riverside County’s 17 hospitals that 133% of the county’s licensed intensive care beds were occupied earlier this week. This means that hospitals have been forced to convert hospital beds that are not normally used for critically ill patients and rearrange them to accommodate intensive care patients.

“Some hospitals are doing things like converting conference rooms… into patient areas,” Reichardt said.

Efforts are underway to convert a 65-bed outpatient surgery center at Riverside University Health System Medical Center, the county’s public hospital, to expand high-acuity intensive and advanced medical care capacity. And at Riverside Community Hospital, efforts are being made to redevelop an area set aside for future emergency department expansion to accommodate critically ill patients.

Orange County hospitals were so busy this week that the Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center activated its 25-bed mobile field hospital provided by the county. Another has been set up at Los Alamitos Medical Center, but has yet to be used, said Jennifer Bayer, spokesperson for Tenet Healthcare, which runs the two hospitals, as well as the Lakewood Regional Medical Center and Placentia-Linda Hospital.

But only in recent days, hospital officials have noticed a slight stabilization in hospitalizations. “It’s not rock climbing. He holds, “ Bayer said. “We hope it’s stabilizing – I think it’s too early to tell. It’s really only been the last two days.

Times editor Iris Lee contributed to this report.