[ad_1]
Authorities in California painted a cautiously optimistic picture of the pandemic on Monday, the day after the single-day case number was the lowest in more than two months and as the state prepared to open its largest site on Tuesday mass vaccination event at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara County.
But even as COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths have dropped dramatically over the past month and the number of vaccinations has continued to improve, California’s outlook remains hampered by uncertain supply. in vaccines and the growing spread of new variants of the coronavirus that could lead to another outbreak.
California reported just under 8,000 new cases of COVID-19 on Sunday – down from 50,000 on January 8 and the first time the state has dropped below 10,000 cases in a day since before Thanksgiving. The rate of positive tests has dropped from 14% to 5% over the past month. Hospitalizations have dropped by nearly a third. In the Bay Area, the number of patients hospitalized with the virus fell below 1,200 on Sunday for the first time in two months.
“This is really encouraging news,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a press conference at the state’s first mass vaccination site, which opened a month ago at Petco Park in San Diego. . “The vaccines, however, we can’t go fast enough.”
With the worst wave of the pandemic in retrospect, Newsom said he would soon announce plans to safely reopen schools, which would include prioritizing teachers for vaccination. Educators are already at a level that is state-licensed to get vaccinated, but most counties do not yet have enough vaccines to offer them.
In the Bay Area, unions representing employees of the San Francisco Unified School District on Sunday announced an agreement in principle with the district to reopen public schools in the city. This deal could be based on vaccinating teachers, depending on the extent of the virus in the community.
Most of California, including all of the Bay Area counties, is still experiencing widespread transmission, meaning they are assigned to the state purple level for reopening. Updated data on the status of county levels is expected on Tuesday.
Dr Rochelle Walensky, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned states on Monday not to ease restrictions too quickly, with transmission rates still dangerously high. The United States surpassed 27 million cumulative cases on Monday.
The country reported more than 460,000 deaths from COVID-19 on Monday. In California, more than 44,000 people have died from COVID-19, including 4,565 in the Bay Area. Although the daily death toll is also declining, the Bay Area reported a grim 109 deaths on Friday, the second deadliest day in the pandemic.
Walensky’s warning comes as California continues to report new cases of more transmissible variants. The state has identified 153 cases of the highly transmissible variant from the UK, Newsom said. Scientists also identified 1,203 cases of two variants originating in California; it is not yet known whether these variants are more infectious. The state has yet to find any cases of variants from Brazil or South Africa.
California and San Francisco health officials have said they believe current vaccines are effective against variants found in the state. But with the new variants spreading rapidly – that from the UK is expected to be dominant in Southern California in a matter of weeks – public health officials have said there is an urgent need to speed up vaccinations.
On February 15, the state will formalize its partnership with two nonprofit health organizations, Blue Shield and Kaiser, to speed up vaccine distribution, Newsom said. California has administered 4.65 million vaccines so far and distributed three times more doses on Sunday than a month ago, he said. But the state still receives just over a million doses per week from the federal government.
“We have to see it pick up the pace,” Newsom said.
Part of increasing doses is building more infrastructure. The state’s largest public vaccination site, scheduled to open Tuesday at the San Francisco 49ers’ Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, will have an initial capacity of 5,000 doses per day which could rise to 15,000.
The state’s immunization levels system currently prioritizes healthcare workers, residents over 65, farm workers, educators and emergency responders, but still does not have enough doses to be given to all eligible. Newsom said on Monday it wanted to prioritize people with disabilities and high-risk medical conditions.
The state has allocated more than $ 6.6 billion to reopen schools and will also include testing, social distancing and ventilation, Newsom said.
“It is my desire to open our schools safely as quickly as possible, especially for our young children, especially children with special needs, foster families, homeless youth, children who do not have access to the devices, ”he said. “I have no doubts that we can do it safely.”
Newsom said fear and confidence are the biggest hurdles to overcome to reopen schools. As of January, there were 87 cases of the coronavirus originating from schools across the state, Newsom said. Marin County officials said Monday they had identified 10 cases of suspected transmission at school out of 17,000 students in the nearly six months since resuming partial in-person education.
As the state worries about the reopening of schools, indoor worship services were given the green light by a Supreme Court ruling over the weekend. The California Department of Public Health has issued temporary guidelines allowing domestic services at 25% capacity for counties in the purple level.
Santa Clara County initially complied with its local health order banning all indoor gatherings, including religious services. But Monday evening, the county revised its ordinance to allow the resumption of domestic services at 20% capacity. The county said in a statement that it “always strongly discourages” indoor gatherings of any kind. The command does not allow singing or singing during interior services.
Calvary Chapel, a church in San Jose embroiled in a legal battle after defying health orders and organizing services inside, posted a live video on Sunday to its Facebook page that showed a cult leading group and a pastor preaching on stage without a mask. Church officials were unavailable for comment on Monday.
In San Francisco, Roman Catholic Sts. The Peter and Paul Church is closed until February 13 after three of the five priests who live there contracted the virus, Archdiocese of San Francisco spokeswoman Jan Potts said. The parish made the decision not to reopen for in-person services because they did not have the resources to manage them, she said.
“The Archbishop wants to make it very clear that it is best to hold masses outdoors,” said Potts. “It’s the safest thing to do, and that’s what science shows.”
Aidin Vaziri, editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, contributed to this report.
Mallory Moench is a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @mallorymoench
[ad_2]
Source link