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Stay-at-home orders in multiple regions across the state are likely to remain in effect past the minimum of three weeks as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continue to skyrocket, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday.
The state’s stay-at-home order — triggered when a region’s average intensive care unit capacity falls below 15% — now affects 98% of the state’s population in the Greater Sacramento, Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley and Southern California regions.
While the Bay Area’s order went into effect Thursday, lasting at least through Jan. 7, the stay-at-home order could expire on Dec. 28 in the San Joaquin Valley and Dec. 30 in Southern California.
Newsom said current trends in coronavirus hospitalizations and ICU admissions will require the state to extend those expiration dates later into January.
“We continue to see record-breaking ICU capacity, hospitals that are getting filled up,” Newsom said during a briefing on the state of the pandemic. “A surge that we are experiencing, not dissimilar to other parts of the country, but putting real challenges on our staffing here in the state.”
ICU capacities in both the Southern California and San Joaquin Valley regions have fallen to 0%, according to Newsom, triggering the opening of surge facilities in the state’s lower half to accommodate more patients. The Greater Sacramento area is at 16.2% and Northern California has 28.7% ICU capacity.
ICU bed occupancy has increased by 51% and hospitalizations have increased by 63% over the last 14 days ending Dec. 20, Newsom said. The state had 2,741 deaths over the 14-day period — 233 people on average each day, Newsom said.
Statewide, just 2.5% of ICU beds are still available, Newsom said.
The numbers are “a sober, sober reminder of how deadly this disease is,” he said.
The Bay Area’s ICU capacity sat at 13.7% as of Monday. Health officers in the region have predicted that the Bay Area’s stay-at-home order could last well into January if the current wave of new cases and hospitalizations is not abated soon.
San Francisco’s Director of Public Health Dr. Grant Colfax said earlier this month that the city could run out of ICU beds entirely by Dec. 27 if the current surge is not contained by methods other than vaccination.
“The vaccine will not save us from this current national, state or local surge,” Colfax said during a Dec. 9 briefing. “There is simply not enough time.”
The state’s current modeling of hospitalizations statewide forecasts nearly 100,000 hospitalizations by mid-January, according to Newsom and state Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly. As of Sunday, 17,190 people were hospitalized due to COVID-19 across the state.
Ghaly said an average of 12% of the coronavirus cases confirmed each day will result in hospitalization and 12% of those hospitalizations then become ICU patients.
“It is true that some regions may begin to exceed their existing stated hospital capacity, not just ICU capacity, by the end of the month and early in January,” Ghaly said.
“We don’t see that across the entire state quite at that time, but we’re watching it very closely,” he said.
A decision regarding an extension of stay-at-home orders will be based on multiple factors, including ICU capacity, the number of new cases over a seven-day period and how quickly the transmission rate is accelerating or decelerating, he said.
With the immediate focus on Southern California and San Joaquin Valley, Ghaly said state leaders are preparing to issue a decision for those areas at the end of this week or next week.
Newsom said the state continues to reassess its surge capacity resources — medical stations set up in addition to hospitals — and has asked the federal government for another field medical station to expand hospital capacity.
He said there was better news regarding vaccines. The state has received 110,000 doses of the newly authorized Moderna vaccine out of an anticipated 672,600 doses; California also received 327,600 doses of the first authorized vaccine, from Pfizer last week and anticipates another 233,025 doses from Pfizer this week, he said.
Watch Newsom’s full Dec. 21 briefing:
Gov. Gavin Newsom anticipates an extension of stay-at-home orders across California as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations surge. Courtesy California Governor Gavin Newsom’s YouTube channel.
Palo Alto Weekly Staff Writer Sue Dremann contributed to this report.
Palo Alto Weekly Staff Writer Sue Dremann contributed to this report.
Palo Alto Weekly Staff Writer Sue Dremann contributed to this report.
Not good news
Yes it looks like we are in for a prolonged lockdown again, you can just read the San Jose Merc news item titled “COVID-19 hospitalizations push California’s ICUs to a record low 1.1% available beds: State has just 1.1% capacity, down from 1.4% at start of week” seen here (https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/12/24/covid-19-hospitalizations-push-californias-icu-capacity-to-dire-levels/)
From the Santa Clara County website here (https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard-hospitals.aspx) 93% of the County STANDARD ICU beds are full, leaving only about 7%, half the number required to get out of CODE BLUE.
Granted the “SURGE” extra gives us currently 13%.
It still is the lowest available bed count since the COVID dashboard started counting it in May 2020.
What is bad is that some ICU beds are becoming available because people died. In the last month more than 100 people died.
So lets just get used to this being around until the numbers start to improve to the same numbers we had in September 2020.
I just saw that only 2,000,000 doses of vaccine were delivered and administered so far on CNN.
Everyone said there would be 20,000,000 by the end of the month.
If this trend continues, the projections made are not even going to be close. they barely reached 10% of the projection in December.
If it urns out that the production is that slow or the supply chains cannot achieve even 50% of the projection, the vaccination program will double in time length, and that is if the vaccines prove safe and effective.
Imagine if only say 25,000,000 people get vaccinated by July of next year and only 50,000,000 by the end of the year? The Movie Contagion predicted this problem, and Trump and the like simply said, of we got this we just spend enough and we can do better.
It looks like that even if 2 more vaccines come on the market the best we might achieve is 100,000,000 people vaccinated by the end of 2021, Since there are 330,000,000 people in the U.S. that means it will be at least 2 years before we can approach enough people to START returning to normal, right?
https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/over-15-mn-covid-vaccine-doses-shipped-across-us-for-immunisation-campaign-120122400139_1.html
Or even if you wee referring to this story
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/23/health/vaccine-rollout-slow-data-lags/index.html
9.5 million doses sent.
Victor you understand this:
“Relax. Shipments to the states through today total 10 million doses. The pipeline is being filled and the DAILY vaccination rate will be close to 2 million by Friday.”
That cannot be possible if the number of doses delivered can’t be 2,000,000 a day.
Be careful for what you call FACTS. Say there are 10,000,000 doses delivered in a month, that means only 5,000,000 people can be given it in a month. Now maybe if you only give vaccinations per weekday and there are 19 weekdays in January, then the most you can vaccinated at that time is 5,000,000 divided by 19 which is 263,158 per day, or DAILY.
If you are going to give 2,000,000 DAILY doses in a month you will need at least 38,000,000 doses delivered a month.
You KNOW that is impossible.
Your FACTS simply don’t ADD up.
You REALLY cannot expect us to take your claims as FACTS under these conditions?
Why are you plagiarizing comments from Peter.carpenter on TSF and passing them off as your own
I.e.” “Relax. Shipments to the states through today total 10 million doses. The pipeline is being filled and the DAILY vaccination rate will be close to 2 million by Friday.””
Oh, I know you think that Peter carpenter and I are the same person. LOL. You obviously do not know how Peter carpenter is and his history in the region
Then you state:
“ Be careful for what you call FACTS”
LOL. This coming from a man who claims that only 2 million doses have been shipped so far and cites a non existent CNN story that you made up.
My claims are facts, backed up by at least 2 news sources.
But also, why are you plagiarizing the writing of Go,dyCSSip, unless…..