California could soon surpass a grim milestone: 2 million confirmed coronavirus infections since the beginning of the pandemic.
The state broke another record with more than 62,661 newly identified cases on Monday, while averaging more than 40,000 cases per day this past week — all despite the governor's latest stay-at home order, which now covers most of the state.
George Rutherford, a UCSF epidemiologist, says Californians shouldn’t read too much into a single day's case numbers, as the state always reports more cases on Mondays due to a backlog of weekend tests. But he was nonetheless “surprised” by the latest statistics.
“I would have hoped we would have turned the corner by now,” Rutherford said. “It's really important what we see in the next couple of days. If you look at the French experience, this is about when they turn the corner, about 14 days after they went into a hard lockdown.”
Rutherford says California’s fate will depend on how much people spread the virus during the holiday. He encouraged Californians to limit their risk and said he is “enormously concerned” about holiday gatherings seeding new cases.
“The case rates went up after Thanksgiving and we haven’t seen that dip down,” he said. “All of us need to encourage people to minimize their exposure during Christmas.”
If the surge continues, the state could run out of intensive care beds by the end of the month.
—Kevin Stark (@starkkev)