Coronavirus updates: California COVID rates dropping fast, but vaccine race still urgent

California remains in its winter coronavirus surge, and while infection and hospitalization rates are showing signs of rapid decline, it’s still a long road back to pre-surge levels of COVID-19 activity.

Health officials are cautiously optimistic that the winter surge could be California’s last substantial one of the pandemic. The arrival of highly effective vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have fueled much of that optimism.

But two major concerns remain.

First, that vaccine roll out is proceeding inefficiently and far too slowly in California. The Golden State as recently as last week ranked dead-last in the U.S. in terms of percentage of received doses it had administered, according to federal data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The pace has improved some. CDPH on its own data dashboard now reports providers have administered more than 2.4 million of the 4.5 million doses they’ve been shipped. California has also escaped the bottom 10 for doses administered per 100,000 residents, according to the CDC, jumping from seventh-lowest Friday to 13th-lowest in Monday’s update.

The state plans to adjust the vaccine distribution plan to make age the primary consideration.

The second concern is that new genetic variants of the COVID-19 virus that are either much more infectious or very resistant to vaccines — or both — will emerge and become predominant, derailing progress in fighting the disease.

The second concern underscores the importance of the first. Genetic mutations that cause variants happen essentially at random — but this means that when the virus is more widespread, there is a higher likelihood of new and troubling variants emerging simply due to the high volume of cases. In a way, this makes the vaccine roll out a literal race against the virus.

To date, more than 3.15 million Californians have tested positive for COVID-19 and at least 37,527 have died of the disease, according to the California Department of Public Health.

The state over the past two weeks has averaged a little under 29,000 new cases per day. In that span, 9% of diagnostic tests for the virus have returned positive.

Those rates are down from peaks of nearly 41,000 daily cases and 14% test positivity earlier in January, and both are falling fast.

But in the long plateau California enjoyed prior to the surge, from early September through the end of October, the new case rate had stayed consistently below 5,000 per day with test rate positivity below 5%, which is the benchmark the World Health Organization has recommended communities reach before reopening their economies.

Hospitalizations and intensive care unit admissions for COVID-19 cases are also down significantly. The virus patient total peaked at close to 22,000 on Jan. 6, but with Tuesday’s update it fell below 17,250 for the first time since Dec. 20, according to CDPH.

In the past two weeks, the statewide ICU total has fallen from a peak of a little over 4,850 down to 4,315, about a 10% decline.

Deaths, which are the last indicator to decline due to the progression timeline for serious cases of the disease, remain elevated.

California has reported 7,014 COVID-19 fatalities in the past two weeks for an average of 501 per day. That’s nearly 12 times higher than the 42 daily deaths the state averaged during the first two weeks of November.

End of stay-at-home order met with confusion, criticism

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday announced that the state was lifting its regional stay-at-home order, which was issued in early December due to skyrocketing infection and ICU rates.

The system grouped California’s 58 counties into five geographic regions — the Bay Area, Greater Sacramento, Northern California, the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California. Each region was subject to the tightest business and activity restrictions imposed since last March, including a shutdown of outdoor restaurant dining, that would begin once that region’s collective ICU availability fell below 15%.

The 11-county Northern California region never fell below that mark. The 13-county Greater Sacramento region dropped below it in December and endured stay-at-home restrictions for about a month, but it was released from the regional order Jan. 12 because state data projections showed ICU space above 15% four weeks into the future.

CDPH announced Monday that the remaining three regions are now also projected above 15% four weeks from now in late February, meaning the Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley and Southern California are also clear to reopen outdoor dining and personal care services like barbers and nail salons.

With the removal of the order, which also dropped the 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew for non-essential activities, all 58 counties are now subject to the state’s color-coded tier system for business reopening. Fifty-four of the 58 counties, constituting 99.9% of California’s population, are in the “purple” tier, which has the tightest restrictions of the four tiers but is not as strict as the regional stay-at-home order.

Monday’s move to end the regional order has been met with criticism from multiple directions.

“Registered nurses across the state of California know that there is a human cost to lifting stay-at-home orders too soon,” the California Nurses Association said in a statement released Monday. “Let’s be clear that even if numbers are ‘trending downward,’ we are still in the midst of the most deadly surge of COVID-19 yet. ... As front-line workers, we know better than elected officials and business leaders that it is not time to let our guard down.”

Some local leaders said they were blindsided, and criticized the Newsom administration for giving little or no notice about the impending reversal. The Los Angeles Times quoted Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti as saying he learned of the regional stay-at-home order being lifted at the same time as the general public.

CDPH formally announced the change in a statement Monday morning, but the news first broke unofficially Sunday evening, after the California Restaurant Association sent a letter to members saying senior Newsom administration officials had informed them the order was to be lifted the next day.

Other local leaders have demanded that Newsom and CDPH fully release the calculations being used to determine ICU projections, which were used to determine the length of the stay-at-home orders beyond the initial three-week restriction period but have not been made public.

“State health officials said they rely on a very complex set of measurements that would confuse and potentially mislead the public if they were made public,” the Associated Press reported last week.

The state had not only not detailed how these projections were calculated, but had not even posted the percentage figures that the projections produced, up until Newsom’s midday news conference Monday, even as Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said the calculations were being looked at internally on a daily basis.

The governor and CDPH now report these projections for Feb. 21: 33% ICU availability in Southern California, 27% in Greater Sacramento, 25% in the Bay Area, 22% in the San Joaquin Valley, 19% in Northern California and 30% for the state as a whole.

Sacramento area by the numbers: Nearly 1,700 dead

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 1,691 virus deaths.

Sacramento County has confirmed 83,931 cases since the onset of the pandemic, and at least 1,194 of those residents have died of COVID-19.

The county added 401 cases and nine deaths Tuesday. That followed 1,464 new cases and 28 deaths reported Monday for the three-day reporting period that includes the weekend, for averages of about 488 infections and nine deaths per day.

By date of death occurrence, December was by far Sacramento County’s deadliest month of the pandemic. County health officials have confirmed 373 deaths for the month — an average of more than 12 a day. The death toll 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 141 county residents died of the virus between Jan. 1 and Jan. 20. That figure is still preliminary as death confirmations can take weeks to be made official.

At least 660 of the county’s deaths have been residents of the capital city, according to the local health office.

Virus hospitalizations in Sacramento County have trended on a steady decline while the ICU patient total remains elevated but may also be showing early signs of dropping. The overall patient total from 377 Monday to 371 by Tuesday.

The ICU total, which hit a record-high 130 one week ago, dipped to 107 on Monday but rebounded to 112 by Tuesday. The state now reports 68 available ICU beds, same as Monday.

Placer County health officials have confirmed a total of 17,675 infections and 188 deaths, last reporting 91 cases and two fatalities Friday. The county also reported two deaths Thursday, and four on Wednesday.

Placer did not update its COVID-19 data dashboard on Monday.

State data on Tuesday showed 109 hospitalized in Placer, down from 115 on Monday. Placer has 25 in ICUs, a decrease by two from Monday, with the number of available ICU beds growing from six to eight.

Yolo County has reported a total of 11,096 cases and 138 deaths, last adding 69 new cases Monday following 64 Sunday. The county reported seven new fatalities Wednesday but has confirmed none since then.

State data showed Yolo with 28 virus patients Tuesday, down from a record-tying 33 on Sunday. The ICU patient total has fallen from a record-high 18 in Sunday’s update to 12 by Tuesday, according to CDPH. One ICU bed was available as of Tuesday’s update, same as Monday.

El Dorado County has reported 8,184 positive test results and 62 deaths. The county reported 182 new cases and confirmed three fatalities Monday for the three-day reporting period including the weekend. Before that, El Dorado added 53 new cases and six deaths Friday,

Virus deaths are surging in El Dorado. Between its updates last Wednesday through this Monday, the county has reported 18 deaths, which is 29% of its death toll for the nearly 11-month health crisis.

Following just four deaths from March through mid-November, at least 58 El Dorado residents have died of COVID-19 since Nov. 25, the day before Thanksgiving.

State health officials reported 19 virus patients in El Dorado hospitals on Tuesday, down from 23 on Monday. Nineteen is El Dorado’s lowest total since early December. The ICU total stands at nine, same as Monday, with available ICU beds growing from two to five.

In Sutter County, at least 8,069 people have contracted the virus and 83 have died. Sutter on Monday reported 142 new cases for the three-day window including the weekend, an average of about 47 per day, with no new deaths confirmed. The county on Friday added 72 cases and one fatality.

Sutter reported 32 residents hospitalized with COVID-19 including nine in intensive care as of Monday, up from 29 hospitalized and six in ICUs on Friday.

Neighboring Yuba County has reported 5,176 infections and 29 dead. The county added 127 cases for the weekend through Monday.

Yuba said Monday it had 28 residents hospitalized with the virus with five in the ICU, up from 23 and four last Friday.

Not all patients are hospitalized in-county, but the only hospital serving the Yuba-Sutter bicounty region — Adventist-Rideout in Marysville — had 54 hospitalized virus patients as of Tuesday, up 10 since last Friday. However, the ICU total dropped by one, from 12 to 11. The hospital has two available ICU beds.