Hope you're ready for a math lesson.
After much prodding, California health officials on Tuesday finally revealed the formula used to project the regional ICU capacities four weeks in the future. That projection is what determined the state's lifting of its stay-at-home orders Monday.
Those forecasts, which look ahead to Feb. 21, predict ICU capacities in all five regions will be well above the 15% threshold necessary to lift the sweeping orders imposed on much of the state in early December when coronavirus cases were beginning to explode. Up until Monday's announcement, three regions — the Bay Area, Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley — were still under the order.
With the byzantine formula as backdrop, Dr. Mark Ghaly, California's secretary of health and human services, attempted to explain the logic of the equations to an audience of presumably flummoxed reporters. The formula, he said, is based on the understanding that the most serious new cases today are likely to be hospital admissions in about two weeks and ICU admissions in roughly four weeks. It also factors in ICU discharge rates and regional ICU bed availability
"If we want to really determine what the impact is of our current case numbers, our current transmission rates, our current test positivity, on where we're going to be in the hospitals, we have to look about four weeks out," Ghaly said during his weekly press briefing. "So that's why you came into [the order] one way, we exited through the order in a different way."
The projections predict that California's overall ICU capacity on Feb. 21 will be just over 30%, with regional projected ICU capacities ranging from 19% in the Greater Sacramento region to 33% in Southern California.
Until now, state officials have been curiously cagey about the data points and the formula used to derive them, claiming last week that the calculations were too complicated and could mislead the public. On Tuesday, Ghaly said his team wanted to make sure the data was accurate before disclosing any projections.
"We did for a period of time work to make sure that our testing numbers were solid, that they were tracking with what we expected them to be on average, that we could account for any changes," he said. "So that when we made a final projection, as we announced yesterday ... we could be confident in what is a fairly weighty decision for three major areas and regions of our state."
During Tuesday's presser, Ghaly offered notably little detail on the state's major decision, announced Monday, to shift to a COVID-19 vaccination distribution system that prioritizes age over job category, bypassing certain essential workers who thought they would be next in line to receive the vaccine.
"We certainly are listening to a lot of feedback, making what I would say are difficult decisions, but trying to make sure that they are clear and simple to follow," Ghaly said. "Using an age-based framework helps us get there."
Despite the shift, he said, California would still focus heavily on equity in its distribution approach and strive to reach the most vulnerable populations, regardless of age.
"So there, of course, is going to be some sectors of our population that don’t come to the front of the line as quickly as some others," Ghaly said. "And we’re working through to make sure that that communication is simple, well understood, because the worst thing is when people don’t know where they are in the line."