“We’re not at the finish line yet,” Governor Gavin Newsom said Tuesday.
California has ordered 5,000 more body bags and has dozens of refrigerated trucks waiting as the state experiences its “most intense” rise in COVID-19 to date, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday.
The state reported 32,326 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, amid a number of “historically high” cases, the governor said. Its average positivity rate over 14 days is 10.7%, the highest it has been since the beginning of the pandemic. Two weeks ago, that rate was 6.9%.
On Tuesday, 142 new deaths were recorded, with an average of seven days at 163 per day as of Monday. That number was 41 months ago.
Amid rising deaths, the state has distributed 5,000 newly purchased body bags in San Diego, Los Angeles and Inyo counties, and has 60 53-foot refrigerated storage units waiting in counties and hospitals. he said. California is also activating its forensic mutual assistance and mass mortality program, Newsom said, to coordinate the response of forensics and morgues.
“This is a deadly disease and we need to keep in mind where we are,” Newsom said. “We’re not at the finish line yet.”
Hospitalization rates are also worrisome, rising 68 percent in the past two weeks, he said. Revenue in intensive care units has also increased by 54% in the last two weeks.
Across the state, the capacity of the ICU is 5.7%. The San Joaquin Valley and Southern California regions have a UCI availability of less than 2%. When a region reaches 0% of ICU capacity, surge personnel and surge management come into effect, Newsom said.
The San Joaquin Valley and Southern California, as well as the Great Sacramento, have entered a state-ordered closure, triggered when ICU availability drops below 15%. Depending on the order of stay at home, they must close non-essential businesses such as hairdressers, bars and movie theaters, restaurants can only be opened for takeaway and retail capacity is limited to 20% for at least three weeks.
Los Angeles County has been particularly hard hit by the pandemic, with average daily hospitalizations of people with COVID-19 up 312 percent from Nov. 9 to Dec. 10, officials said. Nearly half of the county’s ICU beds are occupied by COVID-19 patients, officials said Monday. The weekend could be more than half, as health officials asked residents to stay home.
“Our reality is terrifying right now,” said Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer.
The governor’s briefing comes a day after the state administered its first dose of COVID-19 vaccine in Los Angeles County and thousands of doses are being rolled out across the state. Twenty-four locations expected doses to arrive on Tuesday and 33 hospitals should have the vaccine by Wednesday, officials said.
“There’s light at the end of the tunnel,” Newsom said. “But we are still in the tunnel. We are going through the most difficult and difficult increase we have experienced since the beginning of this pandemic.”
Newsom has received a boost in the state’s COVID-19 response, especially around restrictions. A withdrawal effort has collected more than half of the nearly 1.5 million petition signatures needed in mid-March to get them on the ballot.
Organizers told The Associated Press this week that the effort gained momentum after the Democratic leader dined with friends last month at a restaurant while urging voters to stay home. Newsom has since apologized for attending the event.
Alex Stone and Cammeron Parrish of ABC News contributed to this report.