The coronavirus’ spread in California is likely to pick up this week as people gathered for holidays like Christmas and then hold gatherings to celebrate the new year, the state’s Health and Human Services secretary said Tuesday.
Given the virus’ nature of incubating for up to two weeks, social gatherings during the last week of 2020 are likely to exacerbate the state’s already struggling health care system in the coming weeks, according to HHS Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly.
The Bay Area still has 10.4 percent of its intensive care unit beds available, according to Ghaly, but other parts of the state like Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley have virtually no ICU beds left for additional coronavirus patients, due in part to gatherings for Thanksgiving.
“The celebrations that are planned, we hope some are canceled, some are done differently, so that we can maintain and bring down this spread, but we know and expect that some (gatherings) will happen,” Ghaly said Tuesday during a briefing on the pandemic.
State and local public health officials have encouraged and even pleaded this month with state residents to avoid gathering with people from other households while new cases of the coronavirus multiply in much of California.
Limiting holiday gatherings will be especially crucial, Ghaly said, for moving regions out of the state’s stay-at-home order, which is enforced for a minimum of three weeks in regions of the state with less than 15 percent ICU capacity.
The 11-county greater Bay Area would be eligible to leave the stay-at-home order Jan. 7 if its ICU capacity crossed that 15 percent threshold.
Ghaly said Tuesday that the Southern California and San Joaquin Valley regions would have their stay-at-home orders extended beyond the three-week minimum.
“Christmas gathering and infection becomes amplified, a bit more exponential, over the New Year’s celebrations and we could see the worst of it in early January,” Ghaly said.
Keep the fueling the fear fire. Your followers are dwindling.
OMG….you’re all going to die. Happy New Year from another family that fled Californicate,
Unfortunately even regions that have space available in the Hospitals and Intensive Care Units soon will not because patients from LA and the Valley where they are at zero capacity are being transferred to Hospitals in the Bay Area and Northern California where there is still space. When all regions hit zero capacity then the Hospitals enter crisis mode and start triaging the patients based on not who is the sickest but who has the best chance of being saved. Best thing anyone can do right now is take care of yourself and try to stay safe. I wouldn’t count on being able to rely on medical care in the near future. Hope I’m wrong.
Of course the State would say that. Why wouldn’t they? So if a big protest happens soon, it’ll still be blamed on Christmas on New Year’s.
You mean like on or around Jan 6th?
Which incidentally is my birthday
How interesting, no mention how many patients came across border from Mexico for treatment ? State conveniently leaves that out of press releases perhaps because it would be inconvenient given this states open border stance. Along with those allowed to come across the border legally.
Even during pandemic with it’s increased awareness at the Border over 50,000 people cross into CA daily.
Death rate in USA from CV-19 is three percent, death rate in Mexico is, over triple ours at, ten percent.
Then there’s the financial incentive (medicare compensation) for hospitals, “… garden-variety pneumonia that a person is admitted to the hospital for – if they’re Medicare – typically, the diagnosis-related group lump sum payment would be $5,000. But if it’s COVID-19 pneumonia, then it’s $13,000, and if that COVID-19 pneumonia patient ends up on a ventilator, it goes up to $39,000.” ”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fact-check-medicare-hospitals-paid-more-covid-19-patients-coronavirus/3000638001/
‘Overwhelmed Southern California transferring coronavirus patients to Bay Area hospitals’
“Stanford and UCSF are among the hospitals treating COVID-19 patients from Imperial County along the Mexican border”
https://www.dailynews.com/2020/07/06/overwhelmed-southern-california-transferring-coronavirus-patients-to-bay-area-hospitals/
How unfortunate short sighted DEMs running CA did away with pandemic preparedness program Governor Schwarzenegger set up.
After avian flu of 2006, a forward looking Governor Schwarzenegger set up mobile hospitals program along with stockpiling of 50 million N95 masks, 2,400 portable ventilators along with 21,000 additional patient beds in ready to set up kit form in a warehouse up in Sacramento. Took 24 hours transport and to set up mobile hospitals.
Both those masks an portable hospitals with their ICU’s and ventilators would come in handy today but DEMs didn’t want to pay money for upkeep and storage so they shut program down and got rid of it all.
“The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.” — Ronald Reagan
Incompetence usually only costs CA residents their tax dollars . . . . . .
Protest all you want though. We know. People are slowly waking up. Expect an audit of the death certificates too. We know y’all are cooking the books for that 20% premium baked into the CARES act per covid hospital bed.
I’m beginning to think these guys who absolutely have to appear on tv every other day or so telling us what we pretty much already know are just trying to look useful and justify their huge salaries, massive benefits, and bulging, fat retirement accounts.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/California-is-at-0-ICU-capacity-Here-s-what-15834516.php
Article clarifying ICU bed capacity.
1% of the US population is around 350,000 people. That is not a small number of H U M A N B E I N G S.
This is the only thing they have been consistent releasing. What they are asking isn’t working but they want us to double down on what hasn’t worked…my family and I are doing just fine without their mandates.
State of CA: we have no data to prove that the warning we are offering is factually true. Rather we draw assumptions from the fact that when everyone stays home the cases go down and when we allow people to leave their homes the cases go up. However we have to do something to justify the full salary we continue to draw and job security we enjoy. As such we will continue to offer extrapolations as statements of fact in hopes of sounding effective.
it’s a pandemic. people die. that’s what happens. It’s terrible for his family of course. But no measure of maturity or minding will prevent that nor the collateral costs that are coming with misguided lockdowns.
That’s the rate when everyone can get the help they need in a hospital.
Mayor – can you or someone else post the article from yesterday’s East Bay Times which describes how the ICU data are being “adjusted” due to Covid? It’s behind the paywall so I was only able to read a few sentences but the “adjusting” needs to be more widely understood publicly. Since it appears the “adjustments” are being used to keep us locked down ever longer. Thanks.
Younger people die all the time of heart attacks. I know of two in their early 40s who were even alternative health practitioners who died surprisingly of a heart attack. Sometimes it is due to undiagnosed cardiac weaknesses.
Let’s not also forget the ridiculous amount of stress being foisted on the public over this pandemic. So it is possible that stress itself will cause deaths.
Thousands of suicides,egged on by more and more restrictions and carbon monoxide headaches,and liberals thinking this is all so funny by how many it has hurt
:’suck it up”.
Tell me that in person.
Mike, 1% of the population would be approximately 3,320,000 based on the recent census which stated there are approximately 332,000,000 people living in the US
350,000 is a little of 0.1% of the population
Not saying it’s insignificant. All human life is precious. Just pointing out an error in calculation