In the rise of this summer’s Delta variant, California has managed to be one of three states that are no longer in the “high” transmissions category for COVID-19, along with Vermont and Connecticut.
Like the California Department of Public Health’s former color level categorizations, CDC now has these categories for the nation, and for weeks now, all 50 states have been at the “high” red code transmission level. California, Vermont and Connecticut are now moving to the “substantial” or orange level. This puts us on the way back to the code yellow or “moderate” level where we were in early July, and hopefully the blue or “low” level where we were in June.
The state epidemiologist, Dra. Erica Pan, spoke at a roundtable on Tuesday, the Chronicle reported, and said vaccination rates have helped us, as well as high compliance rates for changing public health orders.
“Our mitigation measures, such as masking, will work regardless of the variant,” Pan said.
In late July, when the CDC updated its mask mandate in light of the Delta variant, it recommended indoor masks for all areas with “high” or “substantial” transmission rates, regardless of the state of vaccination.
California had to reduce transmission levels by 50 to 99 new cases per day per 100,000 residents. The average of seven days of new cases in San Francisco reached 95 through Sept. 9, which equates to 10.9 cases per 100,000, a number that would still have qualified our county for “purple” status. ”In the framework of the state of a few. months ago. In early May, San Francisco was averaging just 26 new cases a day, or 1.8 per 100,000, before the Delta variant arrived and ruined everything.
“I think this virus, and certainly Delta, finds our most vulnerable,” Pan said. “I would like to say to our unvaccinated,‘ You can choose. Your choice is to get infected at some point or get vaccinated. “
Across the bay area, new daily cases have also been declining, and the number of hospitalizations has declined since the level dropped in late August. After reaching a maximum of 1,195 COVID patients in hospitals in the Bay Area on August 25, the hospital census across the region has been reduced to 918, which is even higher than at any time since of mid-February.
New COVID outbreaks are now concentrated in the south, even as things seem to calm down in Florida and Louisiana. Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia are currently experiencing significant increases in new cases, likely motivated in part by infected children at school, college students returning to the party, and the lack of these mask or vaccine states.
However, due to the significant increase over the past two months, the ICUs in Texas, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi are full or full, and Alabama says there are currently no beds available for ICUs.
As an emergency room doctor in Lexington, Kentucky, Dr. Ryan Stanton, in the Associated Press, whole families are getting infected and a third of all new cases in the state are now under 18 years old.
“The problem now is that we’ve been trying to educate based on science, but I think most of the education that’s going on now is based on tragedy, personal tragedy,” Stanton said.
Top image via CDC