Santa Clara County reports 856 new coronavirus cases, 8 deaths

Santa Clara County, California — Santa Clara County Public Health Service report 856 additional coronavirus cases on Friday.

According to the latest report, the county-wide case count is 37,517.

The county reported four more coronavirus-related deaths on Friday, bringing the COVID-19 death toll to 503.

As of Friday, there were 311 COVID-19 patients admitted to Santa Clara County, 79 of whom were being treated in the intensive care unit.

Elsewhere in the Bay Area and beyond, health officials from five counties in the Bay Area have announced on Friday that they will implement a new curfew to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Most non-critical companies need to shut down all indoor and outdoor operations.

This order requires companies such as restaurants, wineries, hair salons, nail salons, cardrooms and fitness centers to temporarily suspend all indoor and outdoor activities, while retailers increase their indoor capacity to 20%. Need to limit.

Schools that have already resumed face-to-face lessons are allowed to continue and such decisions are left to the county staff.

The order, which affects the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Francisco, Marin and the city of Berkeley, supersedes the state’s stay-at-home order officially announced Thursday by Governor Gavin Newsom.

Dr. Chris Farnitano, Health Officer of Contra Costa County, said the recent surge in the Bay Area’s coronavirus has resulted in more new cases and hospitalizations than the summer surge in the region.

“A dark COVID winter has arrived in the Bay Area, fearing we’ll be coming,” Farnitano said on Friday at a virtual press conference with health officials in all six jurisdictions.

“I don’t think I and the other county health officers in the Bay Area can wait for the new state regulations to come into effect later this month,” he said.

State orders will not take effect until less than 15% of the beds in the local intensive care unit are available.

Newsam said Thursday that the entire Bay Area is unlikely to meet that standard until mid-December.

Newsom said Thursday that the state order “wants to ease the mix. The period is over.” “We want to reduce the amount of mixing … and we need to reduce the types of contact and long contact times and opportunities for long contact that occur in many of these facilities. That’s me. That’s why we’re moving forward. “

The five Bay Area counties and the city of Berkeley have opted to execute the order now due to the surge in new cases and hospitalizations in the state.

Los Angeles County has already done so.

Dr. Sarah Cody, a health officer in Santa Clara County, said that less than 15% of the beds in the intensive care unit are already available in Santa Clara County, if all six health officers had the same thing happening across the region I agreed that it was a matter of when it happened.

“We hope that by acting early and acting as a community, we are most likely to bend the curve faster, get out of this difficult situation faster and save more lives,” Cody said. Told.

Six health officials said the order had to be closed at some point during the pandemic, or reduced capacity, and many companies across the Bay Area had already experienced the economy. He acknowledged that it could exacerbate the difficulty.

“This is a difficult way to end a really tough year,” said Dr. Matthew Willis, Marin County Health Officer. “We are just beginning to receive the first dose of the vaccine, so there is light on the horizon.

“Unfortunately, the number of cases is skyrocketing and we need to maintain the line at least until the end of the year,” he added.

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As of Friday night, there were 1,301,921 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 19,658 coronavirus-related deaths in California, according to data from. Johns Hopkins University..

As of Friday night, 13,343,430 COVID-19 cases were confirmed in the United States, with 278,605 coronavirus-related deaths.

As of Friday night, there were 65,771,488 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 1,516,035 deaths reported worldwide.

— Bay City News contributed to this report