As California's economy continues to ease back into gear, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state's top health official pointed on Monday to rising numbers of hospitalizations and ICU admissions as a warning that the state is far from done with measures to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Newsom and Health Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly noted in a press briefing that more than one-third of all the COVID-19 cases in California have been diagnosed in just the past 14 days. The number of hospitalizations also grew 16% while ICU admissions were up 11% in the past two weeks.
"Those that suggest we are out of the woods, those that suggest this somehow is going to disappear — these numbers tell a very, very different and sobering story," Newsom said. "We're not into the second wave (of infections). We're not out of the first wave," Newsom warned.
One metric going in the right direction is testing for the coronavirus. Newsom said about 177,000 tests were conducted statewide over the weekend, exceeding the goal of 60-80,000 he set a few weeks ago.
But Dr. Ghaly noted that two counties, Riverside and San Bernardino, are seeing COVID-19 case increases that are not a result of more testing, but rather trends "that in the future may put pressure on our ICU capacity and our ventilator capacity."
"We're starting to see additional spread in community settings," Dr. Ghaly said. "So those are cases that can't be linked to necessarily a congregate setting," such as prisons or skilled nursing facilities. Instead, he noted new cases are "spreading within households, households that live in closer quarters, maybe in communities where they have a number of multigenerational households."