Although the rate of COVID hospitalizations appears to be leveling off across California, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday the state is expected to continue regional stay-at-home orders for its hardest-hit regions.
Statewide intensive care capacity remained at 0% on Monday, as the Southern California and San Joaquin Valley regions reported no available hospital beds, forcing the use of non-ICU spaces and the state’s surge facilities.
Tuesday marks the end of the initial three-week period since the state’s sheltering order was issued, the earliest date the two regions could potentially exit the restrictions. But they would have had to get their ICU capacity above 15% to roll back the stay-at-home restrictions.
The Bay Area’s ICU availability worsened sharply on Monday, with 9.5% of beds available, down from 11.1% on Sunday. The region’s stay-at-home order expiration date of Jan. 8 will most likely be extended as well.
The greater Sacramento region was at 16.6% availability, down from 17.8% capacity a day earlier. Northern California improved slightly, with 29.3% availability.
Going forward, Newsom warned infections stemming from holiday gatherings may push caseloads to a breaking point.
“This is an anxious period,” he said. “While we have seen a plateau and while we have seen some good news, we likely will experience in two weeks this surge stacked on top of these other surges. We’re doing everything to prepare our facilities.”
Hospitals and intensive care
The state has seen a 37% increase in ICU admissions over the past 14 days, according to data from the Department of Public Health. Statewide, close to 20,000 people are hospitalized for the virus.
“We are less worried about the space in some of our facilities. Our bigger worry right now is staffing,” said Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state’s top health adviser, during the Monday briefing.
He said the state is working with hospitals to bring in traveling nurses to help support permanent staff starting on Jan. 4, with the intention of opening up additional beds.
Coronavirus hospitalizations in the Bay Area continue to climb as intensive care patient numbers in the last five days have hovered between 464 and 480 across the area.
The officials said, despite the encouraging numbers, the next few weeks will represent a critical period.
“We certainly anticipate that the middle of January is going to be a pretty difficult time in our hospitals, where the cases from this week and next week really start to stack on top of one another, impacting the emergency rooms, our hospital wards and ICU spaces,” said Ghaly.
Cases and deaths
The number of average daily cases dropped about 10% for the state and the Bay Area last week.
As of Monday, California’s 7-day average of new cases was about 37,600, down from about 41,800. The Bay Area daily average was about 3,900, down from about 4,300.
Newsom said the numbers were an encouraging sign that the regional stay-at-home order was starting to make an impact and stem the tide of infections.
“In our line of work, unlike baseball, you don’t get credit for saves,” he said. “Maybe this would have been much, much worse had we not introduced some of these interventions. There is evidence they have worked, substantially so. That’s encouraging. That’s certainly the case as it relates to these numbers that are plateauing.”
The average number of daily deaths in California rose to 259 last week, up from 211 the week before. In the Bay Area, that daily average was 24, up from 22.
San Francisco on Monday reported another 155 coronavirus cases, the fewest new infections in more than two weeks and considerably fewer than numbers that have ranged from 193 on Sunday to mostly over 200 and as high as 420 on Dec. 17.
“Frankly, we’re pleased to see a little bit of a plateau,” said Ghaly. “If we continued to see the rate of rise through the last couple of weeks, the impact that we anticipate from Christmas, New Year’s would be even worse.”
Santa Clara County reported 1,672 new cases on Sunday, one of its highest single-day figures ever, while Contra Costa County reported 420 new cases, its lowest figure in six days. Many counties do not report over the weekends, and weekend and holiday data can also be skewed.
At least 75 U.S. Army and Air Force medical personnel have been deployed to California to assist in the pandemic response. An Army statement on Monday said the deployment was at the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency “as part of a Department of Defense COVID-19 response operation.”
Pandemic travel
The number of air travelers in the United States reached a new pandemic high on Sunday despite the ongoing COVID-19 surge and the pleading from public health leaders to stay home. The Transportation Security Administration on Sunday logged 1,284,599 travelers through its airport checkpoints, the largest single-day total since mid-March.
“It only suggests we are going to see an increase of cases across the country,” Newsom said.
More than 19 million Americans now have been infected with the coronavirus, as the newest surge blankets the nation.
The United States now has lost more than 334,000 lives to the coronavirus, including 1,209 deaths on Sunday, according to Johns Hopkins University. The country has logged 19.2 million coronavirus infections since the start of the pandemic, as of Monday morning.
Globally, more than 81.1 million cases have been confirmed and nearly 1.8 million lives have been lost around the world.
Monday marked the one-year anniversary of China informing the World Health Organization that it had discovered cases of “pneumonia with an unknown cause” in Wuhan.
At a press briefing, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus praised “the extraordinary cooperation between the private and public sector” in developing tests and a vaccine.
“This is a moment for all of us to reflect on the toll the COVID-19 pandemic has taken, the progress we have made, the lessons we have learned, and what we need to do in the year ahead to end this pandemic,” he said.
Vaccines
California has administered 261,672 doses of coronavirus vaccines as of Dec. 26, Newsom said. The state anticipates receiving about 1.76 million doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines by the end of the week.
That is less than the 2.1 million to 2.4 million doses the state initially projected for December “but not by a huge factor,” Newsom said, adding the state expects more shipments in the new year.
“We’ll start to see these numbers stack up,” he said.
CVS Health and Walgreens began vaccinating residents and staff of long-term care facilities in California and other states on Monday under their contract with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a coronavirus vaccine provider.
California’s vaccine recommendation advisory group is scheduled to meet on Wednesday to approve Phase 1B of the state’s rollout plan and discuss who will be available for vaccines under Phase 1C.
Older adults may be included in the next group of Californians to get vaccinated for the coronavirus, under a new proposal that state vaccine advisers considered last week. People 75 and older, along with those 65 to 74 with health conditions, are now being considered for inclusion in the roughly 15 million residents next up for shots following health care workers and long-term care facility residents.
People 16 to 64 with underlying conditions, utility workers and defense workers will most likely be next in line, according to Newsom.
California health care providers that violate coronavirus vaccine priority guidelines — such as allowing people to skip the line — could lose their license or be dis-enrolled as a vaccine distributor, Newsom cautioned.
“I’m not naive to the prospect there are going to be some issues and we’re going to have to work with our county partners to monitor that behavior at the local level and even at the clinic level and make sure someone’s not passing a few vials over to their cousin or aunt or uncle or, God forbid, making a buck or two on the backs of vaccine that should be distributed to someone who’s at higher risk or higher need,” he said.
Chronicle staff writers Erin Allday and Catherine Ho contributed to this story.
Aidin Vaziri is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: avaziri@sfchronicle.com
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