California’s escalating coronavirus crisis continued its upward trajectory Friday, as former success story San Francisco said it is headed to the state’s purple “widespread risk” tier, and Santa Clara County raised the frightening prospect of its hospitals filling by mid-December.
On Friday, county health departments across the state reported more than 13,050 new cases and at least 85 more deaths from the virus — marking the third consecutive day with more than 12,500 cases and more than 75 deaths recorded, according to data compiled by this news organization.
As the state heads into its new COVID curfew, which takes effect Saturday night, there are more known infections of COVID-19 in California now than at any other point of the pandemic — and 52% more than a week ago.
“If we continue on this trajectory — a nearly quadrupling of cases over a month — our health care system could soon be struggling to deal with the burden of the virus, and we will have many more people in the hospital and diagnosed with COVID-19,” San Francisco Public Health Officer Dr. Grant Colfax said during a news briefing Friday.
There will be more deaths as well: As of Friday, the death toll in the state rose to 18,643, with an average of nearly 60 per day over the past week, 51% higher than a week ago.
Los Angeles continues to drive California’s totals — on Thursday it recorded nearly 5,000 new cases — but the Bay Area’s numbers are surging.
In Santa Clara County, which broke a record for the highest number of new coronavirus cases recorded in a single day with 407, Public Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody urged residents once again to cancel any Thanksgiving plans outside of their immediate household.
Over the past week, Cody’s county has seen the largest increase in hospitalizations across the Bay Area. The number of patients hospitalized in Santa Clara County rose from 110 to 166 in the past week alone and nearly doubled over the course of the past two weeks, according to county figures.
If that trajectory continues, Cody said, Santa Clara County would exceed its hospital capacity in just three weeks.
“We are indeed at a critical juncture in this pandemic, and the choices that each of us makes may mean the difference between having enough hospital capacity to care for all of us and our family and friends and not enough,” Cody said during a news briefing Friday.
In San Francisco, Colfax warned his county could revert to the state’s most-restrictive purple tier for reopening “as early as Sunday,” forcing the city to close more businesses and abide by the state’s curfew order, imposed Thursday.
Just three weeks ago, San Francisco was on the least-restrictive yellow tier, Colfax said. “This is indicative of how fast the virus is spreading in our city,” he said. “But we can change the course of this surge.”
Since the week began, California has been admitting a net of more than 200 COVID-positive patients a day to its hospitals, and on Thursday the total reached 4,755, according to the California Department of Public Health. That’s the most active patients since the third week of August.
While California is conducting more tests than ever — over 170,000 per day over the past week — that is not the sole reason for the infection spike. A higher percentage are coming back positive.
On Thursday, the rolling seven-day positivity rate reached 5.6%, an increase of more than a full point in a week’s time, from 4.4% last Thursday. The statewide positivity rate had been 2.9% on Oct. 31.
Nationally, the coronavirus pandemic this week also continued a destructive course, although the outlook was leavened by promising news that vaccines may become available in December. The U.S. average has reached 166,000 new coronavirus cases and more than 1,300 COVID-related deaths per day, according to data collected by the New York Times.
Compared to this time two weeks ago, the U.S. is averaging about 73% more cases and about 63% more fatalities reported per day, according to the Times’ data, while there are about 52% more patients currently hospitalized nationwide, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
The nationwide death toll has climbed over 253,000, more than any other country in the world. And for the first time during the pandemic, there are now more than 80,000 patients receiving care for COVID-19 in hospitals across the nation.
As dire as California’s numbers are, they remain well below those national measures: The state hospitalization totals are 2/3 of its mid-July peak, and its per capita infection rates over the last week are less than 1/4 the rates in the hardest-hit states in the Midwest. California has kept tighter restrictions on businesses and activities than all but a few states.
