SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) – A delta-driven summer coronavirus wave is once again stressing some California hospitals, especially in rural areas, but the trend is showing signs of moderation and experts predict improvement in the coming weeks.
The pattern is similar to the peaks of infection that California experienced last summer and much more severely during the winter when intensive care units were overflowing. But this time moderation comes without the stop orders that previously slowed California’s economy, businesses and schools.
“We definitely look forward to it,” Dr. Erica Pan, a state epidemiologist, said Tuesday.
The latest state projection “seems encouraging that we are reaching the altitudes or we are reaching the maximum levels,” Pan said in an interview with The Associated Press. But he added that “what we have learned” about COVID-19 is its unpredictability.
Serious cases are still on the rise, with more than 8,200 patients in hospitals and nearly 2,000 in intensive care across California. One of the highest daily rises in new hospital admissions was last week, Pan noted.
Deaths have begun to rise and state models predict that about 2,000 people will die in the next three weeks, adding to the death toll in California approaching 65,000, most of the country.
The epidemiological models of the state they show the rate of hospitalizations stabilizing, with a maximum of about 9,300 hospitalizations around Labor Day before the figures begin to decline. Admissions to the ICU are expected to follow the same pattern, reaching a point just below 2,200. During the worst moment of the pandemic in January, hospitalizations exceeded nearly 22,200 and admissions to the ICU nearly 5,000.
It is important to note that the statewide infection rate has dropped by 25% in the last three weeks, from a maximum of 7% of people tested to 5.2%.
“We’re hoping things get down to level and that we’ll be on the other side of this particular wave relatively soon,” Pan said.
San Francisco and other areas with high vaccination rates are experiencing a “definite decline,” while Los Angeles County is beginning to improve, said Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco.
This follows a UCSF epidemiological model that predicted that the current rise would peak in mid-August and that the state would return to a low number of cases by mid or late September, he said.
Although several locations re-imposed interior masking requirements after briefly lifting them last spring, this time health officials avoided resetting capacity limits or closing businesses. Still, California remains in a much better shape than states like Florida and Texas that have seen hospitals overwhelmed by cases of delta variants.
Gandhi said higher levels of immunity in the state, rather than broad blockades, made a difference this time around.
Vaccinations began as the winter rise slowed, but natural immunity also increases as unvaccinated people get sick and recover.
“All of this immunity is knocking down our cases in California,” Gandhi said.
She and other experts hope that vaccination rates will increase as more employers are forced to make vaccines and a vaccination test is required to participate in more activities.
Experts also hope that some people will be more comfortable receiving the shots after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday fully approved the Pfizer vaccine for people over the age of 16.
About two-thirds of eligible Californians 12 years of age or older are fully vaccinated and another 10% have received their first vaccines. Areas with a higher number of new cases and hospitalizations tend to be areas with lower immunization rates.
In Del Norte County, in the far northwest of the state, only 44% of eligible people have received at least one shot and averaged 170 new COVID cases per 100,000 residents in the last week, a rate almost triple any other county. Tuolumne, Kings, Yuba and Sutter counties had rates in excess of 50 new cases per 100,000. The state average is 28. All of these counties have vaccination rates well below the state average.
But statewide, the speed with which each infected person spreads the disease, known as R-effective, has been steadily declining since mid-July. In many counties, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, it has fallen below one, meaning it will decrease the number of people infected.
The San Joaquin Agricultural Valley remains a key concern, in large part because the current climb began there later and is still rising, Pan said, “but we also hope the rate of increase is not as strong as before.” .
To help the hardest hit areas, the state is again requiring hospitals with ICU space to accept patients from people with less capacity. It also continues to waive rules for out-of-state health care workers who help California by contract.
Pan and California Hospital Association spokeswoman Jan Emerson-Shea said exhaustion is a growing problem for medical staff who have been battling the pandemic since early last year, particularly with a group reduced number of itinerant doctors and nurses due to the increase in other states.
Some counties now see more hospitalizations than during either of the previous two climbs.
For example, Tuolumne County, near Yosemite National Park, had 22 patients admitted, double its peak in December. Lake County had twice as many patients, 20, as before.
Diffusion in rural areas reflects both low vaccination rates and many that had been relatively intact during previous waves, said Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, an affiliated professor of medicine at Stanford University.
“In the larger counties you don’t see a significant increase or a challenge: hospitals aren’t being questioned right now,” he said. “For me, the only interpretation of this is that the vaccine is effective in preventing serious disease, regardless of the variant.”