Coronavirus updates: California sets new case record one day before Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving arrived and it’s cold outside. People are fatigued and exhausted from more than eight months of restrictions caused by a pandemic that continues to upend lives, has battered the economy and has now killed close to 19,000 Californians.
Yet, health officials say, there’s no room for mistakes or letting guard down because COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, is surging more intensely than ever before in the Golden State.
Thursday was a critical moment in California. New infections are growing exponentially in various areas — rural, suburban and urban parts of the state are all being hit hard.
The state on Wednesday reported 14,640 new cases, down from the record set Tuesday of 18,350 new cases. That daily mark brought the two-week average to a staggering 11,934. Officials also reported 104 new deaths Wednesday, which was the third triple-digit fatality report in the past month. The state reported 106 deaths Tuesday.
Concern is sky-high in the capital region, where Sacramento County on Tuesday shattered a one-day record with the reporting of nearly 1,000 new cases. County Health Officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye said she is “really concerned” by the latest numbers.
In Los Angeles County, officials have nixed restaurant dining — indoor or outdoor — for three weeks. The temporary ban went into effect Wednesday night, and comes in response to exploding case numbers there.
Statewide, the total of hospitalized COVID-19 patients is soaring. It shot well past 6,000 on Tuesday, up to more than 6,400 as of Wednesday, and is very quickly approaching the summer peak of about 7,200.
The patient total in intensive care units with the respiratory disease has doubled since the start of November, now above 1,500 for the first time in more than three months.
Sacramento County’s virus patient total tripled in the first three weeks of this month. And three of its closest neighbors — Placer, Yolo and the Yuba-Sutter bi-county area — have all had their COVID-19 hospitalizations hit record highs this week.
Sutter County, in a weekly data release from the state health department, recorded the highest test positivity rate in the entire state at 16.6% for the survey week ending Nov. 18. That’s about triple the statewide rate in a metric health experts say is good for tracking true spread level for the virus.
On its own local health dashboard, the Yuba-Sutter bi-county area said Tuesday there are now approximately 1,090 residents with active cases of coronavirus, more than there ever were during California’s summer surge.
State and local health officials have set off alarm bells. They believe the current surge has primarily been driven by private, in-home gatherings involving members of multiple households, saying people have been too relaxed in their social distancing and face covering protocols in these settings.
The worry is only amplified by Thanksgiving — a holiday that traditionally produces exactly these types of mixed-household gatherings in droves — as well as the spate of winter holidays stretching from early December through New Year’s Day that will tempt more indoor get-togethers as weather gets colder and potentially wetter.
California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said during a Tuesday news briefing that was not too late to “call that audible” and cancel large, risky holiday plans.
“Together we can stop the surge,” he said. “We’ve done it before. We have the tools to make that turnaround.”
To date, more than 1.15 million California residents have tested positive for COVID-19, and at least 18,979 have died, the California Department of Public Health said Wednesday. In the past two weeks, the state has reported more than 11,000 infections a day, over 2½ times the rate from the beginning of November.
Why are businesses closing if the surge is linked to gatherings?
As Ghaly has explained before, even if the origin of a surge is believed to be private gatherings in people’s houses, booming COVID-19 activity makes every interaction riskier. Community transmission becomes more likely, with a higher probability that any given person will come across someone who is contagious, because there are simply more infected people out there.
This was the reason Ghaly and the state gave for CDPH hitting the metaphorical “emergency brake” on Nov. 16, demoting a vast majority of Californians into the strict purple tier of business and activity restrictions.
The purple tier, in which restaurants, gyms and places of worship must stay closed for indoor operations, now includes 45 of California’s 58 counties combining for close to 95% of the state’s 40 million residents.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration went a step further last week, announcing a month-long 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew for non-essential businesses and gatherings in purple-tier counties.
It’s a measure that has been slammed by some local government leaders across California, especially rural and some suburban parts of the state, and met with lukewarm response in the Sacramento area. Sacramento County health chief Dr. Peter Beilenson recently said he’s more concerned about the types of gatherings — such as Thanksgiving dinners with friends and extended family — that are generally held before 10 p.m.
Additionally, local law enforcement agencies have said almost universally that they won’t be enforcing the curfew.
The curfew’s impact may end up being more psychological than practical.
“The curfew makes it sound like there’s a war going on,” Sanjay Varshney, a Sacramento State business professor, told The Bee last week.
Testing is up in California
If there’s any glimmer of good news in California’s recent coronavirus numbers, it’s the fact that the state is processing far more tests on a daily basis now than it had been just a few weeks ago.
On Tuesday, CDPH reported more than 15,000 new lab-confirmed cases. It was the second-highest daily total of the pandemic by volume up to that point, but it also came from a pool of nearly 284,000 diagnostic tests, which was easily a new record high.
Tuesday’s numbers equated to a test positivity rate of 5.4% for that daily batch of results. That figure is higher than the state would like it to be, but lower than had been typical in recent days.
But then, in a quick turnaround on Wednesday, the state’s more than 18,000 positives came from a group of just under 169,000 tests, working out to a positivity of nearly 11%. As a result, the two-week average for test positivity jumped from 5.6% to 5.9% in one day. In the past week, 6.5% of tests returned positive.
With higher testing capacity in recent days, the rolling 14-day average for daily tests conducted is now nearly 190,000, compared to 140,000 just two weeks earlier.
More testing and faster turnaround time are unarguably beneficial in containing COVID-19 spread. Both bolster contact tracing, isolation and quarantine efforts, all critical components in dampening the exponential growth trend of the virus.
Newsom in a Monday news conference (from quarantine) attributed the rising test capacity in large part to a recently entered contract with Massachusetts-based diagnostics company PerkinElmer.
The bad news for California is that as quickly as testing has grown, new cases and hospitalizations have increased even faster.
Average daily testing is up about 42% since the start of November. In that same period, new daily cases are up 166% and the concurrent hospitalized total is up 144%, according to CDPH data updated Wednesday.
Latest Sacramento-area numbers: 737 dead, hundreds hospitalized
The six-county Sacramento area has combined for at least 737 deaths and more than 53,000 total confirmed infections during the health crisis.
As of Wednesday, hospitals in those six counties were treating more than 430 patients with COVID-19.
Sacramento County has recorded 35,739 lab-positive coronavirus cases and 566 resident deaths from the virus.
The local health office on Tuesday morning reported 957 new cases, well above the previous single-day record of 559 set last week, followed by 596 more on Wednesday.
Sorted by episode date — the date of a positive test being conducted, rather than the date it was reported out publicly — the county now says more than 1,800 new cases emerged during the three-day window of Nov. 17 through Nov. 19. Those were the first three days of the pandemic in which the county had more than 600 daily new cases.
Hospitalizations continue to surge and are quickly approaching the peak from summer of 281 concurrent patients. On Wednesday, Sacramento County had 265 hospitalized virus patients, up 12 from Tuesday, with 49 still in ICUs.
At least 37 Sacramento County residents died of the virus between Nov. 1 and Nov. 17, health officials said Wednesday, increasing the month’s tally by six since Monday.
Within the county, the city of Sacramento on Wednesday surpassed 20,000 cases — a total that works out to roughly one in every 25 people testing positive for the disease. At least 315 city residents have died of the virus, just one week after passing the 300 milestone.
Yolo County has reported 4,476 total lab-confirmed cases during the pandemic. The county reported 108 on Tuesday, a new daily record, but broke that record the next day with 114 more cases. At least 74 Yolo residents have died of COVID-19 to date.
Yolo reached a record-high 20 patients in hospitals with confirmed cases Tuesday, which fell to 16 on Wednesday, according to state data. ICU patients dropped one, from seven to six.
Placer County has reported 6,224 cases during the pandemic, adding 384 on Monday for a period including the weekend for an average of 128 a day — which would be a record. Placer reported another 77 on Tuesday and 76 on Wednesday.
The countywide death toll is 68. That figure decreased by two from 67 to 65 between Friday and Monday, then rose by three on Tuesday. A reduction to a county’s death toll is most often due to a correction in place of residence, which leads to the fatality being moved to another county’s jurisdiction. It can also simply be a data error.
Placer’s spike in hospitalized cases continues to break records on a daily basis, and on Monday it hit triple-digits for the first time. The county reported having 106 patients in hospital beds with confirmed coronavirus as of Tuesday, up from 31 at the end of October, with 92 (87%) in hospitals specifically “because of COVID.” The county says 10 were in ICUs, eight of them being treated specifically for the disease.
State data, which varies slightly from the county’s own numbers, on Wednesday showed 110 hospitalized with nine in ICUs. The state makes no distinction between patients in hospital beds who have tested positive for COVID-19 and those admitted specifically for the disease.
El Dorado County is one of a few California counties with a single-digit death toll, with just four fatalities since the start of the pandemic. But new cases are coming at an accelerated pace and hospitalizations are rising fast as well.
The county on Monday added 78 cases covering the weekend followed by 73 more on Tuesday and 39 on Wednesday for a cumulative total of 2,130 confirmed infections. Tuesday’s tally included 23 cases from El Dorado Hills and 27 from the Lake Tahoe area.
El Dorado had 11 hospitalized COVID-19 patients as of Wednesday, with a record-high six now in ICUs, state data show.
Sutter County health officials have reported a total of 3,144 people positive for the coronavirus and 15 deaths, with one fatality reported Tuesday.
The county added 111 new cases Sunday, 143 on Monday, 114 on Tuesday — the three highest tallies of the pandemic — and 91 on Wednesday.
Yuba County has reported a total of 1,981 COVID-19 infections and 10 deaths. The county reported 78 new infections Monday, shattering the previous one-day record of 46 set in August. Then on Tuesday, it broke the record again with 85 new cases. Wednesday’s report added 34 new cases.
Sutter and Yuba, sister counties that share a public health office and have just one general acute hospital between the two of them, have seen the COVID-19 patient total at that hospital shoot up very quickly.
Adventist Health/Rideout in Marysville was treating 36 virus patients as of Monday, up from 27 on Friday, the local health office said, with six in ICUs. The hospitalized total dropped to 32 by Tuesday, but the ICU number held steady.
This story was originally published November 25, 2020 at 9:20 AM with the headline "Coronavirus updates: California sets new case record one day before Thanksgiving."
