Coronavirus updates: Sacramento County reaches 50,000 COVID cases; vaccine arriving soon
A vaccine could be in the arms of health care workers within days, but California is still reckoning with an immense surge of COVID-19 activity that has already pushed hospitals to critically low capacity levels.
And there’s little to suggest that the crisis will ease in the immediate future.
First, the good news: Pfizer’s vaccine, which was developed and cleared in record time as part of a global effort to accelerate the end of the coronavirus pandemic, is on the way in California. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted it emergency use authorization Friday, and an independent panel of scientists put together by California, Washington, Oregon and Nevada on Sunday gave it the green light for use in those states, agreeing on its safety and high efficacy.
Shipping is underway now, with doses expected to arrive early in the week, possibly as soon as today in some parts of California.
In Sacramento, some of the first vials will be stored in special freezers at UC Davis Medical Center. From there, they’ll be distributed to hospitals throughout the region. A few other hospitals will receive their own, direct shipments.
The vaccine will be administered first to front-line health care workers who regularly deal with COVID-19 patients, followed by vulnerable populations such as those in nursing homes, before manufacturing and distribution can scale up enough to make it available for the general public.
Many of those doctors and nurses are plenty eager to roll up their sleeves, 10 months into the world’s worst pandemic in more than a century.
Now for the bad news, of which there is unfortunately plenty: COVID-19 infections, the rate of tests returning positive, the number of hospitalized virus patients, the number of those patients in intensive care units and coronavirus deaths are all continuing relentless growth in the Golden State.
The capital region reached a milestone on Monday: Sacramento County surpassed 50,000 lab-confirmed cases for the pandemic. That’s equal to about one in every 30 county residents contracting the virus.
New cases and hospitalizations are expanding to new record highs on essentially a daily basis, and it’ll likely take months until vaccine availability is widespread enough to have an impact on these curves. Because of this, health leaders continue to urge heavy precautions, including mask use, social distancing and avoiding gatherings as much as possible, all in efforts to ensure that the current surge is the last major one of the pandemic.
Where does ICU capacity stand in California?
The California Department of Public Health reported on Monday that statewide ICU capacity has fallen to 6.5%, less than half of the 15% benchmark that the state has instituted as both a warning flag and a trigger for tighter restriction protocols.
The situation remains worst in the San Joaquin Valley — which hit 0% on Saturday, recovered to 1.5% on Sunday and went back to 0% on Monday — and in Southern California, which is now at a bleak 2.7%.
Those two combine for more than 27 million residents. They, along with the roughly 3 million people in the 13-county Greater Sacramento area, are subject to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent stay-at-home order, which bestows strict business and gathering restrictions on geographic regions once ICU capacity falls below 15%. San Joaquin Valley and Southern California triggered the restrictions the weekend of Dec. 5-6, and Greater Sacramento triggered it last Wednesday.
The two other regions are the Bay Area and Northern California. In the Bay Area, ICU space was at 17.8% on Monday and it hasn’t yet dropped below 15%, but five counties already initiated their own local orders tightening restrictions more than a week ago. In and Northern California, ICU availability remained at 29% on Monday, the same percentage as Sunday.
Restrictions for the more than 30 million Californians in impacted regions include bans on restaurant dining, both indoor and outdoor; shutdowns of numerous non-essential businesses including barbershops and salons; and a 20% capacity limit on retail stores.
The stay-at-home order keeps counties within those restrictions for a minimum of three weeks. For Sacramento, the end of this three-week window will coincide with the end of 2020. State health officials will then assess the ICU capacity situation “approximately twice a week,” CDPH says on the state’s COVID-19 website.
ICU capacity in the Greater Sacramento region has bounced around near the 15% mark, hitting 15.1% on Sunday before dipping back down to 14.8% on Monday. The regional stay-at-home order requires the region to stay under the order for at least three weeks, regardless of whether the capacity surfaces back above 15% at any point.
When the stay-at-home order expires in a region due to improving ICU capacity, counties will still be subject to the color-coded tier system. That reopening framework had 54 of the state’s 58 counties combining for 99.9% of California’s population in the purple tier, the strictest of its four tiers, as of last week’s update.
Case rates, hospitalizations expand on all-time highs
As hospitals scramble to treat the sickest of virus patients and expand staffing and other resources for their ICUs, patient totals continue to grow explosively statewide.
The total for confirmed, hospitalized COVID-19 cases has boomed from 10,000 to over 13,600 in the past week, with the total in intensive care growing from about 2,400 to nearly 3,000.
The total of virus patients in hospital beds has grown by a net of more than 400 patients for seven straight days, state data show. This means hospital admissions are far outpacing the rate at which COVID-19 patients are being released or dying.
Just as worrying, cases are flooding in faster than ever. California recorded more than 218,000 cases in the past week for an average of 31,000 a day — more than triple the peak rolling average from the summer surge.
While testing has expanded, with the state on several recent days processing more than 300,000, the test positivity rate has continued to rise sharply and is now at 10.5% for the past two weeks. That’s the highest two-week rate since April, when the state’s testing infrastructure for COVID-19 was still in its infancy.
State Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly has said that about 12% of people with the virus will end up hospitalized within two weeks of being reported and, of those, 30% will end up in ICUs. For the past week’s 218,000 cases, that’d mean more than 26,000 ending up hospitalized and over 7,800 requiring intensive care by about Christmas.
The two-week daily average of 26,500 is now more than double what it was on Thanksgiving — a holiday pointed to as a probable source of virus spread as many Americans convened and dined with loved ones, despite health officials’ pleas not to hold multi-household gatherings. Holidays remain a point of concern. Hanukkah began last week, Christmas is 11 days away and New Year’s celebrations are less than three weeks out.
The death curve is now skyrocketing as well, heading toward record levels. The rolling 14-day average for COVID-19 fatalities has jumped from 62 to 132 in the past two weeks, state data show. The state peaked at 142 deaths a day in mid-August.
To date, more than 1.58 million Californians have tested positive for the disease and more than 21,000 have died, according to CDPH.
Capital region: Over 920 dead in six-county Sacramento area
Coronavirus numbers across the six-county Sacramento area continue to grow exponentially. About 77,000 residents have tested positive and at least 921 have died of the virus since the start of the health crisis.
Thousands of those infections are still considered active, several hundred are hospitalized and dozens are in intensive care units across Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties.
All six counties have recently reported test positivity above the statewide rate of 10.4%. Sutter and Yuba had rates above 17%, while the other four counties’ rates were in the neighborhood of 12%, state and local health office data show.
Sacramento County has reported a total of 50,223 infections and 689 related deaths since the start of the pandemic, reporting 2,750 new cases and 19 fatalities Monday. The county does not update data on weekends.
State data from Monday showed a record-high 463 coronavirus patients in Sacramento County hospitals, including 87 in intensive care. The county maintained 79 ICU beds, up by nine compared to Sunday, as hospitals work to expand surge capacity.
Local health officials have now confirmed at least 127 virus deaths from November. The month has surpassed September’s toll and is now second only to August, when 181 county residents died of the disease.
County health officials have also confirmed 31 deaths occurring in just the first week of December, as of Monday’s update. Based on that week’s preliminary numbers and current hospitalization trends, December’s death toll is likely to exceed November’s.
The county’s estimation is that of the 50,000 cases, nearly 15,000 are still currently active. That’s roughly 1% of Sacramento County’s population.
Placer County health officials have reported a total of 8,879 infections and 92 deaths, last updated Friday. Three fatalities were reported Friday.
Placer County hospitals had 182 COVID-19 patients, a new record. The tally includes 18 in ICUs, with seven ICU beds reportedly available, state data updated Monday showed.
Yolo County has reported a total of 6,267 infections and 89 deaths, reporting 149 new cases Monday.
State data updated Monday showed Yolo with 24 virus patients in hospital beds including 11 in intensive care, with three ICU beds still available.
El Dorado County has reported 4,085 3,754 positive test results and eight deaths. The county added 331 new cases Monday in a report which covers the weekend. In its previous report Friday, 126 new infections were added.
The county reports 25 people hospitalized, two fewer than El Dorado’s all-time high, with 14 in ICUs. According to state data, just two ICU beds are available.
In Sutter County, 4,657 people have been infected and 33 have died. On Thursday, 73 were confirmed infected and one was reported dead. On Friday, 82 infections and two deaths were reported. County health officials reported a daily record for infections with 204 new cases on Tuesday.
Neighboring Yuba County has reported 2,820 infections and 10 dead, with 81 new infections on Thursday and 40 on Friday. Its daily infection record was matched on Sunday, when 87 people were confirmed to have coronavirus. On Dec. 2, the same number were confirmed infected.
The lone hospital in the Yuba-Sutter bi-county region, Adventist-Rideout, had a record-high 62 coronavirus patients including 15 in the ICU as of Monday’s update. Both figures remained the same from Sunday to Monday, but the available ICU bed count dropped from three to two.
This story was originally published December 14, 2020 at 8:23 AM.
