San Francisco has seen its two weekly new corona virus outbreaks since the outbreak began, with more than 1,500 new confirmed cases every week since Dec. 1, and no signs of slowing down as the uprising enters its second week. Home Orders. Hospital admissions continue to increase in the city and region, and the Bay Area has seen an increase of nearly 20,000 new positive events each in the past two weeks.
The monotonous parade of numbers we have heard since March is insensitive, and it is natural to want to play it. As businesses suffer under the new regulations, it is important to remember why we make these sacrifices when the San Francisco are watching a holiday without communal festivities – and the numbers continue to worry even if they are not constantly scared.
As of Monday morning, there have been 18,645 confirmed Govt-19 cases in San Francisco since March – and thousands more have not been identified. Four of the maximum single-day cases in the last seven days have come in, with more than 300 new cases each, and a total of 1,577 cases in the seven-day period, up from 1,546 cases reported in the previous week.
The Bay Area’s total rose to 192,094 cases as of Monday morning from 152,899 cases on November 30, an increase of more than 39,000 cases in 14 days. If experts’ predictions are true, it could translate to about 4,700 COVID-positive patients in need of hospital care now and between Christmas. Compare that with 1,451 confirmed and suspected COVID patients in Bay Area hospitals as of Saturday, and you can see why public health officials and Governor Gavin News are pushing the panic button.
The Bay Area area, which also includes the Santa Cruz and Montreal counties for state purposes under the latest framework, has not fallen below the 15% threshold for ICU bed availability, which is triggering regional accommodation orders, and we are getting closer. KRON4 hit the area with 16% bed availability on Friday, after which they reported more than 17% availability. Attacking that gateway, which could happen in a day or two, means that the districts of Napa, Solano and San Mateo, along with Santa Cruz and Montreux, will have to join the drastic measures to stay at home. The Bay Area was already enacted last week.
In some districts and across the state the picture is much worse than in San Francisco, where there are only 38 more people in the ICU beds, for a total of 154 Govt patients admitted to the hospital. There are 465 hospital-admitted COVID patients in Santa Clara County, 106 of whom are in ICU beds on Saturday – and the county added a total of 2,029 new confirmed cases Sunday. Nationwide, more than 360,000 new cases have been added in the last 14 days, and hospital admissions have risen 58% since the beginning of the month to more than 8,240 to 13,000. COVID-19 has killed 21,049 people in California, and nearly 1,900 have occurred in the past two weeks.
“We face the reality that we cannot treat sick people and that more people will die unnecessarily,” Mayor London Breit announced at a December 4 press conference in which San Francisco announced that it would initially choose to stay at home.
Officials have been saying for a month now that the worst is yet to come and we have not seen all of the above yet. For all the setbacks that have occurred in stopping businesses, the truth of the matter is that the only way to stop the spread of this virus is to stop people moving, not to leave the house, to stop completely.
Related: Bay Area Corona Virus Info – Updated daily