SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – State home stay orders will remain in effect in the Bay Area until at least January 8, with the potential for extension depending on the intensive care unit’s capacity projections, state health officials said on Saturday.
The request to stay at home in the state is triggered when the average ICU capacity of a region drops below 15%. The current capacity of the Bay Area ICU is 5.1 percent, according to the California Department of Public Health.
The San Joaquin Valley, Southern California and Greater Sacramento regions remain under home stay requests because their four-week ICU capacity projections do not meet the ability to exit the order, the department said.
Available capacity in the Greater Sacramento region is 6.9 percent, while the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California regions have dropped to a dismal 0 percent, according to the department.
The health department said on Saturday that California has 2,345,909 confirmed cases to date, although the numbers may not represent the real change from day to day, as notification of test results may be delayed. There were 53,341 new confirmed cases recorded on Friday and the 7-day positivity rate is 14 percent, while the 14-day positivity rate is 12.6 percent, the department said.
There were 33,391,442 tests conducted in California, representing an increase of 333,131 during the previous 24-hour reporting period.
As the number of cases continues to rise in California, the total number of individuals who will have serious consequences will also increase. There have been 26,357 COVID-19 deaths since the pandemic began.
On Wednesday, a total of 335,983 doses of vaccine were administered across the state. As of Monday, a total of 1,762,900 doses of vaccine have been distributed to local health departments and health systems that have facilities in several counties.
HOPE SIGNS
With December dominated by the drop in ICU capacity and the signs of a coronavirus outbreak on holiday, it was easy to miss some good news: a post-Thanksgiving outbreak finally lost steam.
“So we saw some reduction in the rate of increase in our cases,” said Santa Clara County Health Officer, Dr. Sara Cody, just before Christmas.
“It will take a week or more for everything to be resolved,” said UCSF epidemiologist George Rutherford. “I think that just before Christmas we started to notice a drop, which was good and we saw that in several indicators.”
Whether this positive trend has continued or not is a little difficult to say right now. Holidays and weekends reduced testing and delayed reporting.
“I think things are going in the right direction,” says Rutherford. “The question is whether these trends were damaged until the new year. We won’t know until we know. “
Southern California, however, is a different story – 20,000 new cases in Los Angeles on Friday, with a test positivity rate of more than 21 percent.
“You know, there is an interesting thing that is being kicked out, which is this British variant that has been found in San Diego in several cases,” explained Rutherford. “The question that is circulating now is whether it could be differences in strains that are causing more disease in Southern California. I think it’s an extremely easy explanation, based on 5 cases, out of 20,000 … but it’s something that needs to be investigated. “
Back in the Bay Area, improving the numbers would be just that: an improvement over the beginning of December. Real progress would still be far away.
“At some point we will be able to extract ourselves because many people have been vaccinated,” said Rutherford. “I think we have to be in our game for a few more months until the vaccines are firmly in place.”
© Copyright 2021 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, transmitted, rewritten or redistributed. Wilson Walker, correspondent for Bay City News and KPIX, contributed to this report