The violent coronavirus is revealing new unpredictability as the promised increase after the holiday continues to accelerate, with some hospitals now seeing an increase in the number of patients with COVID-19 who did not have underlying medical conditions, officials say.
Hospitals in the bay area and beyond are seeing an increase in these patients, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at UCSF, on Sunday.
“It’s not just people in nursing homes or people who are sick with immunocompromising conditions who get sick,” said Chin-Hong. “With COVID, it’s a disease of equal opportunity, in a sense.”
This lends more uncertainty to predict who will become seriously ill.
At the beginning of the pandemic, only 7% of COVID-19 deaths in Los Angeles County occurred among people without underlying medical conditions, while now, 14% of deaths are among that group, reports the Los Angeles Times.
Santa Clara County recorded the highest number of COVID-19 deaths over the weekend to date – 40 lives lost to the virus were recorded on Saturday – as the number of cases and deaths reached new levels of concern and health leaders were preparing to more weeks of tragic post-holiday encounter results.
The Bay Area in general approached yet another depressing milestone on Sunday, with nearly 3,000 deaths from COVID-19 since the pandemic began. Nearly 303,000 Bay Area residents were infected by Sunday. Across the state, the death toll is soon to reach 30,000.
Overburdened hospitals across California continue to struggle to find intensive care beds, while experts predict the increase will get even worse this month, before stabilizing in February.
The capacity of the hospital ICU in the Bay Area was only 3% available, based on Friday records, and the Greater Sacramento region was almost as restricted as 6.4%. The hospitals currently most affected by the pandemic in southern California and the San Joaquin Valley regions have continued to fight the zero percent ICU capacity available and have used state-created ad hoc facilities to ensure that all patients can receive care. .
Vaccination rates continued to fall short of distribution. California administered 734,405 vaccines as of Saturday, of nearly 2.2 million doses sent to local health departments and health systems in several counties.
Globally, more than 90 million people have been infected and nearly 2 million have died, including more than 373,000 Americans, according to data tracked by Johns Hopkins University.
Tatiana Sanchez is an employee of the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @TatianaYSanchez