“Light at the end of the tunnel” or a small blip? Flattening the COVID-19 numbers brings hope to California | Nation / World

Governor Gavin Newsom described the flattening number as “light at the end of the tunnel,” adding that the positive rate of coronavirus testing and the number of hospitals and intensive care units using COVID-19 are declining. It was.

“We’ve seen some encouraging signs,” Newsom said. “But now, more than ever, I want to be vigilant, keep my mask off, and make sure I’m doing my best to maintain that discipline’s purpose and go another way. It’s our duty. Surge. “

Even in the hit Los Angeles County, at least for now, there was a flicker on Friday that the crisis might no longer worsen. However, the hospital situation is so dire that authorities say they rarely celebrate, leaving concerns that things could get worse quickly.

Dr. Paul Simon, Chief Science Officer of the Los Angeles County Public Health Service, said: “It’s hard to know what to do with a slightly smaller increase one day (and).” We expect it to level off. Unfortunately, we are at a very high level. It has leveled off …. This is too high a level of community expansion. “

In Los Angeles County, the average daily number of coronavirus cases per week rose to one of the highest in the pandemic, reaching 15,102 in the seven days that ended Wednesday. However, by Friday night, the county had an average of about 14,600 cases per day over a week. On Friday, the Los Angeles Times aggregate found 14,557 cases reported in LA County.

California reached one of the worst daily average cases of the new coronavirus on Sunday. This is the second highest number in the pandemic, about 45,000 cases per day. However, since then, that number has stopped increasing and fluctuates between 41,000 and 44,000 cases per day.

California last recorded a record number of COVID-19 inpatients on January 6, surpassing 21,936. The final record number of the maximum number of COVID-19 ICU patients was Sunday, at 4,868 in the ICU.

By Thursday, California hospitals had 20,998 COVID-19-infected individuals, including 4,745 ICUs.

State Health and Welfare Secretary Dr. Mark Garry said in an interview this week that the recent relative improvement in pandemic trends is a sign of a local curfew that began to come into force about six weeks ago. I’m working.

There is no guarantee that there will be no significant surge in the coming weeks, but there is some optimism that the recent surge has “slowed down compared to what we supported.”

However, this may only be a temporary bright spot, as authorities have expressed concern about a more contagious variant of the coronavirus that was first identified in the United Kingdom in September.

Preliminary research shows that the infection rate is about 50% higher than that of conventional varieties, and as the number of infected people increases, hospitalization worsens and more people die. Already confirmed in San Diego and San Bernardino counties.

“I’m very worried about this variant because I’ve seen what’s happening in England in early fall, from a relatively rare source … turning into a predominant strain in southeast England.” Simon said.

Los Angeles County officials did not provide additional information on Friday about whether to issue a new order aimed at stopping the spread of the disease. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Thursday night that further scrutiny settings include an outdoor gym that is allowed to open at 50% capacity, and indoor malls and retail stores that are supposed to open at 20% capacity. Said it would include a store.

Simon admitted that the public was exhausted from the fight against the pandemic. “In the last few months, we have had less compliance with the limits …. We can implement additional limits, but unless they are adhered to, they will not have the desired effect.”

“Honestly, I think our greatest hope is to deploy this vaccine as soon as possible. We are working hard to make it happen and comply with our limits as much as possible. I keep calling on people to do it, “he said.

According to Simon, he urged people to comply with all restrictions as much as possible, even if they couldn’t always comply with them. For example, LA County official guidance prohibits gatherings of people outside the household. But he also said that walking outside with a few friends at home was probably a safe activity as long as everyone wore masks and were physically separated from each other.

“We don’t want you to get together in a big group,” he said. “We are aware of the pain of social isolation that is overwhelming right now …. We are only encouraging people to stay there. We are on the right track with vaccines. I think you are. “

The fact that the vaccine has been reported to be 95% effective “is almost a miracle,” Simon said.

The daily death toll in California remains very high. On Friday, the state reported a record number of COVID-19 deaths in a single day, according to a health jurisdiction tally conducted by the Los Angeles Times. It broke the record of 685 aggregated on January 8th.

California currently reports an average of 536 deaths per day in the past week, a record, roughly equivalent to one death every three minutes. About 33,000 Californians of COVID-19 died in this pandemic.

LA County reported 260 deaths on Friday. The county killed an average of 233 people a day last week. This is one of the highest numbers in a pandemic.

Southern California hospitals are suffering from horrific overcrowding. In Los Angeles County, hospital morgues are so full that 16 members of the California National Guard can help store corpses while funeral homes and morgues are processing the unprocessed portion. It was called. As of Tuesday, LA County coroners had about 150 bodies among those who died of COVID-19.

Riverside County has also procured additional storage space to store the bodies — 10 refrigerated trailers. Eight of them can store 50 per trailer.

There are complex reasons for delays. Shane Leikart, a spokesman for the Riverside County Emergency Management Agency, said in a decision, “because the family” waits a moment and expects to get together and bring the family. ” It may take some time. .. “There are some financial concerns … People are struggling financially for many reasons, many of which are related to COVID.”

The 17 hospitals in Riverside County were very populated with COVID-19, with 133% of the county’s licensed ICU beds occupied earlier this week. This means hospitals are forced to remodel beds that are not normally used by critically ill patients and readjust them to accommodate ICU patients.

“Some hospitals do things like transform meeting rooms into patient areas,” says Reichardt.

Efforts are underway to remodel the 65-bed outpatient surgery center at the county’s public hospital, Riverside University Health Systems Medical Center, to expand the ICU and sensitive medical surge capacity. Riverside Community Hospital is also working to reclaim the area reserved for future expansion of the emergency department to accommodate critically ill patients.

The Orange County hospital was so busy this week that the Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center activated the county-provided 25-bed mobile field hospital. The other was installed at the Los Alamitos Medical Center, but has not yet been used, said Jennifer Bayer, a spokeswoman for Tenet Healthcare, who runs both hospitals, at Lakewood Regional Medical Center and Placentia Linda. I said like a hospital.

However, in the last few days, hospital officials have noticed a slight stability in hospitalization. “It’s not mountaineering. It’s holding,” Bayer said. “I hope it level off — I think it’s too early to say. It’s been really the last few days.”

(Staff writer Iris Lee contributed to this report.)

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