The dreaded post-New Year's COVID-19 surge has not been as bad as California health officials had feared.
State hospitalizations are down 8.5% over 14 days, with the number of intensive care patients also easing, Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said Tuesday. Hospitals that had been seeing 3,500 new patients each day are now seeing 2,500 to 2,900 daily admissions — still distressingly high, but “quite a significant reduction,” Ghaly said.
The statewide positivity for the virus fell below 10% for the first time in weeks, and each infected individual is now infecting less than one other person — a recipe for an eventual decline in cases.
“These are rays of hope shining through,” said Ghaly, who also said he’s hoping things improve with the new Biden administration. "I think we're seeing that statewide, not just in certain parts that often have seen that decrease first, but (also) in some of those most heavily impacted areas like Southern California and San Joaquin Valley."
He warned that hospitals will likely experience a slight bump in patients in the coming week, but a drop by the end of the month.
The recent decreases all indicate that the state's wave of winter coronavirus cases and deaths may be beginning to crest, Ghaly said.
State officials, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, have referred to the winter spike in cases as the "last wave" of the virus before vaccines become widely available to the public.
Even so, California this week surpassed 3 million COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began last January. More than 34,000 people have died in the state, including more than 6,700 people in the last two weeks.
Health officials are in a race against time, not only as patients continue to become sick and die but as the virus mutates into forms that can spread much more easily.
An L452R variant has been found in at least a dozen counties and identified in several large outbreaks in Northern California’s Santa Clara County.
The variant is one of five recurring mutations that made up a strain called CAL.20C found in more than one-third of Los Angeles County infections, researchers at Cedars-Sinai said.
To date, roughly 3.2 million vaccine doses have been shipped to the state's local health departments and health care systems, with roughly 1.5 million doses administered.
On Friday, counties across California administered the largest number of vaccine doses in one day to date, 110,505, ultimately helping the state meet its goal of doling out 1 million doses by Friday.
Delays in data reporting also mean the state's total number of administered vaccine doses is likely even higher than 1.5 million, Ghaly said.
—KQED News and wire services