Coronavirus updates: As California COVID rates decline, more focus on vaccine rollout

While California’s coronavirus rates continue to show signs of improvement from a dire winter surge, health officials remain concerned by the state’s slow rollout of vaccine.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Department of Public Health last week began directing counties to start vaccinating members of the general public ages 65 and older, spurred by recommendations from the federal government and the Trump administration’s promise to release a reserve stockpile of vaccine doses.

That hit a snag when it turned out that that federal stockpile didn’t exist, as officials acknowledged late last week. Data on COVID-19 vaccine distribution released weekly by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show all U.S. states and territories slated to receive exactly the same allocations of both Pfizer and Moderna doses next week as they did this week.

Dr. Erica Pan, state epidemiologist, said Wednesday during a vaccine advisory committee meeting that California is currently receiving only about 400,000 to 500,000 doses per week from the federal government — a pace that is unlikely to increase significantly until another vaccine gains emergency use authorization in the U.S., which is unlikely until at least March.

At the current rate, it’d take until June to vaccinate all Californians ages 65 and up. The pace is forcing health leaders to take yet another look at priority and allocation protocols.

Pan also announced Wednesday the state can release a hold it had placed on a batch of about 330,000 Moderna doses. That pause had been in place since Sunday, when a single-digit number of possible allergic reactions emerged, linked to an unspecified vaccination site in San Diego County.

“We had further discussions with the County of San Diego Department of Public Health, the FDA, CDC and manufacturer, and found no scientific basis to continue the pause,” Pan said in a prepared CDPH statement formally lifting it. “Providers that paused vaccine administration from Moderna Lot 41L20A can immediately resume.”

In the Sacramento area, Placer County reported it received 2,900 doses from the lot, and Yolo County acknowledged that it had “some” but did not provide a specific number. Neither had administered any of those doses; Placer said it had planned to start doing so this week prior to the pause. Sacramento County said it did not have any doses from the lot.

California’s improving COVID-19 data by the numbers

Essentially all key metrics for COVID-19 spread are on the decline in California with the exception of deaths. Fatalities lag behind other data indicators by a few weeks, with high death tolls continuing to reflect the recent peaks of hospital crises that remain ongoing in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley.

Those two regions continue to have 0% reported intensive care unit availability, as they have for more than a month, though virus patient totals have started to drop or plateau in some of the hardest-hit counties including Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Fresno, state data show.

Statewide, CDPH on Wednesday reported 19,979 confirmed COVID-19 patients in hospital beds including 4,682 requiring intensive care. Those are still exceptionally high totals — more than 25% of all licensed hospital beds in the state are occupied by virus patients — but Wednesday marked the first day below 20,000 since Dec. 28. Both totals have trended downward for close to two weeks.

Perhaps even more encouraging for the near future, California’s test positivity rate is sharply declining. As a two-week average, it has fallen from 13.7% to 11.3% in the past 10 days.

While the state surpassed the 3 million case milestone with Wednesday’s update, the day brought only 22,403 new cases — well below the daily average of about 39,000 during the prior two weeks. Those positive results came from a round of about 264,000 diagnostic tests. That equates to a single-day positivity rate of about 8.5%.

Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said in a Tuesday news briefing California’s “R-effective” number is estimated at 0.95. Any R-effective measure below 1 indicates that spread of the virus is decreasing, not accelerating — or as Ghaly and Newsom frequently put it, that the pandemic’s growth curve is “bending” in the desired direction.

Deaths continue to pour in at their fastest rate of the pandemic. California in the past two weeks has reported 6,935 COVID-19 deaths, an average of 495 per day, including 694 in Wednesday’s update for the second-highest daily total of the pandemic. The state entered November averaging 50 deaths a day.

The state’s cumulative death toll was 34,433 as of Wednesday’s update. More than 14,000 of those deaths have come in Los Angeles County residents, state data show.

Six-county capital region surpasses 1,600 deaths

The six counties that make up the bulk of the 13-county Greater Sacramento region — Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties — have reported more than 130,000 combined positive cases and at least 1,622 virus deaths as of Wednesday.

Sacramento County has confirmed 81,637 cases since the onset of the pandemic, and at least 1,145 of those residents have died of COVID-19.

The county reported 454 new cases Wednesday and 505 on Thursday, and increased the death toll by 17 each day.

By date of death occurrence, December marked by far Sacramento County’s deadliest month of the pandemic. County health officials have confirmed 369 deaths for the month — an average of nearly 12 a day. The death toll has more than doubled that of August, the previous worst month, in which 181 county residents died of the virus.

Local health officials now say at least 96 county residents died of the virus between Jan. 1 and Jan. 15. That figure is still very preliminary as death confirmations are made official; it increased by 12 between Wednesday and Thursday’s updates. At least 68 died during the first week of 2021.

More than half of the county’s death toll, 620 have come in residents of the capital city.

Virus hospitalizations in Sacramento County have fluctuated some but generally declined, while the ICU patient total remains elevated. The overall patient total fell from 452 on Tuesday to 447 on Wednesday. The ICU total, which hit a record-high at 130 on Tuesday, dropped slightly to 128 on Wednesday, but the available ICU bed total went from 67 to 66.

Placer County health officials have confirmed a total of 17,490 infections and 184 deaths, reporting 110 new cases and four deaths oon Wednesday. Placer on Tuesday added 619 cases and for an update covering a four-day reporting window, due to the holiday.

Data show Placer’s hospitalized total declining from a peak of 216 near the end of 2020, while the ICU rate fluctuates. State data on Wednesday showed 149 hospitalized in Placer, up from 148 on Tuesday, with the ICU total growing from 24 to 26. CDPH data indicates there are now eight ICU beds available, down from 11 reported Tuesday and 18 reported Monday.

Yolo County has reported a total of 10,609 cases and 138 deaths, adding 298 new cases and reporting seven fatalities Wednesday following 228 cases Tuesday.

State data showed Yolo with 30 virus patients in hospital beds on Wednesday, same as Tuesday, but with the ICU patient total falling from 10 to eight.

However, CDPH continues to report zero ICU beds available in Yolo, while Yolo on its local dashboard Wednesday reported having one bed still available.

El Dorado County has reported 7,886 positive test results and 49 deaths. The county on Wednesday reported 60 new cases and five new deaths.

Following just four deaths from March through mid-November, at least 45 El Dorado residents died of COVID-19 between Nov. 25 and Jan. 8, county officials report.

State health officials reported a record-high 46 virus patients in El Dorado on Jan. 12, but the figure has fallen significantly, down to 22 by Wednesday. The ICU total fell from nine on Tuesday to four Wednesday, though the available bed total also fell from eight to five, according to CDPH.

In Sutter County, at least 7,828 people have contracted the virus and 79 have died. Sutter on Wednesday reported 75 new cases and one new fatality.

Sutter County reports 36 residents hospitalized with COVID-19, including nine in intensive care.

Neighboring Yuba County has reported 4,996 infections and 27 dead, adding 47 cases and no deaths Wednesday.Yuba says it has 28 residents hospitalized with the virus with six in the ICU.

Not all patients are hospitalized in-county, but the only hospital serving the Yuba-Sutter bicounty region — Adventist-Rideout in Marysville — had 50 hospitalized virus patients as of Wednesday’s state data update, down from 54 on Tuesday, and with the ICU total dropping from 20 patients to 16. The hospital has three available ICU beds, up from just one on Tuesday.

The Bee’s Sophia Bollag, Dale Kasler and Jeong Park contributed to this story.