Coronavirus infections increased in the bay area in the week ending on Friday, with the average number of new cases daily at 475, an increase of 8.7% over the previous week, which ended on March 26.
The data may indicate that California is starting to align itself with the rest of the United States, where coronavirus infections have stabilized or increased due to more infectious variants.
“On the West Coast, we see stabilization,” which is not a bad thing, said Dr. George Rutherford, an infectious disease specialist at UCSF. “We can go back a little bit. We can get to the bottom and jump a little bit. “
This is the fourth consecutive week of increase in cases across the country, according to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States.
“We know that these increases are partly due to more communicable variants, which we are monitoring closely,” Walensky said at a press conference at the White House on Monday.
She said that young people are generating the most recent increase in infections, as the increase in vaccination rates in older Americans is avoiding the most serious cases among this group.
Walensky said the agency is seeing several outbreaks linked to youth sports and extracurricular activities, and called for caution in resuming high-risk activities too early.
“I understand that people are tired and ready to end this pandemic, just like me,” she said. “Please continue to persevere and do the things we know to prevent the virus from spreading.”
In the first week of this year, before a steady slowdown began, an average of 4,500 cases were reported in the Bay Area each day. Weekly deaths from COVID-19 averaged 78 in the week ending April 4, down from 113 reported the week before.
But as the region approaches another tragic milestone of 6,000 COVID-19-related deaths since the start of the pandemic, some public health experts fear that new cases may disrupt positive trends in hospitalizations and deaths. Again, the high number of older people who are now vaccinated could prevent these numbers from increasing as abruptly as they did before the vaccine.
The average number of reported virus-related deaths across California dropped from 200 a day on March 28 to 120 on Sunday. And COVID-19 hospitalizations are at their lowest level in more than a year: about 2,000 patients with COVID-19 and 500 in intensive care, a big drop since the beginning of January, when those numbers were approaching 22,000 and 4,900, respectively.
At noon on Monday, the cumulative number of deaths in the bay area was 5,957, according to data reviewed by The Chronicle. Across California, the pandemic claimed 59,293 lives. Nationally, 555,000 died of COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University screening.
“It is fair to say that we are having an outbreak in parts of the United States now,” said John Swartzberg, an infectious disease specialist at UC Berkeley School of Public Health. “Call it a swell if we want, but it’s a sharp increase in cases, with Michigan being the poster boy. The real variable will be how much immunity we have in different parts of the country to withstand the outpouring of states that have a problem. “
He said he feels optimistic about California’s ability to escape a serious national increase, partly because large areas of the state are likely to have a high degree of immunity to previous infections or vaccination.
“I’m not sure which direction California is going to take, but we are in very good shape now,” said Swartzberg.
Governor Gavin Newsom’s office said on Friday that it is preparing to remove the state’s color-coded, layered reopening system as vaccination rates improve and coronavirus cases continue to fall.
Swartzberg said he preferred California public health officials to postpone the reopening for another month.
The state plans to open access to the vaccine for everyone aged 16 and over in less than two weeks, as supplies improve.
“My policy for this month would not be to open up as we are doing. I think we are making a terrible mistake, ”he said. “Just this month, if we drag our feet, we can keep California in a very good place in the pandemic. But maybe the public policy people are right and we can get away with it ”.
California announced a plan in early March, linking the number of vaccinations in low-income communities to an accelerated reopening system. Tier assignments have already been loosened once, when the state reached 2 million vaccinations in these communities. They will be even more flexible when the state reaches 4 million vaccines.
As of Monday afternoon, the state had 3.96 million vaccinations in low-income communities. Once they reach the goal of 4 million, Bay Area counties can quickly resume activities such as indoor dining, concerts, meetings, professional sports and other activities that were considered high risk last year.
“We have to be aware of what may have happened yesterday at Easter, with family gatherings. And we have to be aware of what is happening with the quick reopenings, ”said Rutherford. “I am still quite confident that we will avoid another increase in the west. In general, people got the message. And we are vaccinating at a very fast pace. “
There is also a concern that variants may also have an impact on reversing the Bay Area’s progress.
On Sunday, the Stanford Clinical Virology Lab identified and confirmed a case of an emerging variant that originated in India, said Lisa Kim, a spokeswoman for Stanford Health Care.
The variant is dubbed the “double mutant” because it carries two mutations in the virus that help it attach to cells. It could be responsible for the new worrying increase in cases in India, with the country reporting on Monday the biggest increase in a single day, more than 103,000 confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic. This surpassed the previous daily peak of almost 98,000 cases recorded at the end of September. The death toll in India is 165,101.
Kim said it remains to be seen whether the variant is more infectious or resistant to the vaccine’s antibodies than the initial coronavirus. Stanford is examining seven other suspected cases; the location of the person infected by the confirmed variant was not disclosed.
The latest discovery adds to the list of worrying variants that have arrived in the US, including the widespread variant B.1.1.7, which is 50% more infectious. The P.1 strain originating in Brazil and a variant from South Africa were found in the bay area and both are believed to be resistant to vaccines.
Chronicle team writer Michael Massa contributed to this report.
Aidin Vaziri and Erin Allday are editors of the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected], [email protected]