Name: Coronavirus: California, Bay Area obliterate records for cases as hospitalizations soar to another new high
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Coronavirus: California, Bay Area obliterate records for cases as hospitalizations soar to another new high

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By | | Bay Area News GroupWith medical facilities already strained in parts of California, there were still no signs Monday that the current surge of COVID-19 was slowing down. Statewide and locally, the start to the new week brought record numbers of new cases and hospitalizations from the virus.County health departments around California combined to report 34,136 new cases of COVID-19 Monday, according to , a staggering total that obliterated the previous single-day record by more than 10,000. The Bay Area also shattered its previous daily high with 4,380 new cases, including all-time records in San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Mateo and Contra Costa counties.According to state health officials, approximately 12% of new cases result in hospitalizations two to three weeks later, and 20-30% of hospitalizations eventually require an intensive care unit. By those estimates, California could see an influx of more than 4,000 hospital patients and potentially another 1,000 ICU admissions in the coming weeks just from Monday’s tally.Hospitals around the state are already treating more COVID-positive patients than any other point of the pandemic, with more than 10,000 Californians hospitalized as of Sunday, including 2,360 in ICUs, according to the latest data from the state Department of Public Health.Compared to the start of November, California is averaging more than quintuple the number of new cases per day and its active hospitalizations have quadrupled. Its positivity rate, which was at 3% to start November, has exploded to 10.5%.There’s reason to believe California’s current wave hasn’t crested yet, according to Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state’s top health official.“Not that this is just the beginning, but we believe the levels of transmission that we’ve been reporting so far will continue to go up some because of those activities around Thanksgiving,” Ghaly said Monday.Just as rising transmission can predict an increase in hospitalizations, there is often also a corresponding rise in deaths as more patients are admitted with severe cases of the virus.On Monday, California’s cumulative death toll crossed 20,000, with more coming in the past week than any other seven-day period since the end of August. Counties around the state combined to report 112 new fatalities from the virus, increasing the daily average to nearly 120 per day, or a total of 836 lives lost to the virus in the past week.In Santa Clara County, where ICU capacity has dwindled to 15%, there were eight new fatalities reported on Monday, the most in the Bay Area. Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, which are part of the Southern California region where 10.9% of ICU beds remain open, reported the three highest daily death tolls in the state, accounting for exactly half of Monday’s 112 casualties.Across the Bay Area region on Monday, 25.1% of ICU beds remained open, compared to 6.6% in the San Joaquin Valley, 20.3% in Greater Sacramento and 28.2% in Northern California, according to the state. After falling below the 15% threshold, all of Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley are now under the most restrictive stay-at-home orders since the spring, while many Bay Area counties voluntarily implemented the new rules.On a per-capita basis, the Bay Area is reporting fewer infections than the rest of California, but California’s rate is now approaching the national average. There were just over 30 new cases for every 100,000 residents in the region over the past week, compared to about 56 for every 100,000 statewide and about 61.5 per 100,000 nationally. In Los Angeles County, where cases have spiked 88% in the past week, the per-capita infection rate is over 80/100K per day, which would rank 14th nationally, between Idaho and Colorado.More than 15 million Americans have now been infected with COVID-19, according to the New York Times, with an average of more than 200,000 new cases per day for the first time of the pandemic. More than 2,200 Americans have died from the virus each day, on average, over the past week, according to the Times’ data, and a total of nearly 284,000 have perished since the beginning of the pandemic.We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. We reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.Get Morning Report and other email newslettersFollow UsMost PopularClose

By | | Bay Area News GroupWith medical facilities already strained in parts of California, there were still no signs Monday that the current surge of COVID-19 was slowing down. Statewide and locally, the start to the new week brought record numbers of new cases and hospitalizations from the virus.County health departments around California combined to report 34,136 new cases of COVID-19 Monday, according to , a staggering total that obliterated the previous single-day record by more than 10,000. The Bay Area also shattered its previous daily high with 4,380 new cases, including all-time...

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Evan Webeck

Latest Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area news from reporters & columnists at The Mercury News.

Coronavirus: California, Bay Area obliterate records for cases as hospitalizations soar to another new high

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