As the end of one of the most disheartening months for the California coronavirus response approached, Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday once again implored Californians to take the pandemic seriously.
California, once seen as a model for preventing the spread of COVID-19, now averages 9,859 new cases per day. Hospitals and intensive care units across the state are filling up. The state’s average number of deaths per day increased from 91 last week to 109 on Monday, according to the governor’s figures.
“What more evidence do you need than that about how deadly this disease can be,” Newsom said during a news conference from the Diamond Nuts facility in Stockton on Monday. “Please wake us up to that reality.”
The county governor’s “watch list” showing trends regarding coronavirus, which last month included a small fraction of the state, has grown to 37 counties representing 93% of the state’s population. On Monday, Santa Cruz County became the last in the Bay Area added to the list.
Of particular concern are eight counties that make up the state’s Central Valley, including Fresno, Kings, Kern, Merced and Stanislaus, where the spread of the community is disproportionately affecting residents there.
While public health experts initially focused on stopping the spread in densely populated urban areas of the country, the disease is now transmitted to record levels in the state’s agricultural centers, from Kern County to Yuba County.
The rate at which coronavirus testing is yielding positive results in the Central Valley range of 10.7% to almost 17.7%, well above the state average of 7.5%, according to data from the public health department. Many of the region’s hospitals have requested additional state personnel to help overcome surges at their facilities. And, some of the counties are experiencing effective transmission rates of up to 1.4, which means that each infected person transmits the virus, on average, to 1.4 people, increasing the chances of transmission of the disease, according to data shared by Mark Ghaly, Secretary, California Health and Human Services Agency.
Dr. George Rutherford, an epidemiologist at UC San Francisco and an infectious disease expert, said the only way to break the cycle is to create places where people can isolate themselves when isolating at home is not a practical option, especially among low-income Latinos. state revenue. population that constitutes a large part of the essential workers of the state.
“It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out that people are being bused to work, very crowded, and then they return to dense housing at night, either with multi-generational housing or many roommates,” said Rutherford. “That is the new pattern of transmission that we are seeing now and we have to identify infected people and isolate them.”
Newsom announced Monday that the state will provide $ 52 million to help support the affected region. The money, part of a $ 199 million federal grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will be used to improve quarantine and testing protocols and recruit more health workers.
“Today’s hospital numbers actually came from infections weeks ago, so if we want to improve the situation here in the Central Valley and across the state, especially when we are knocking on the door of the flu season and the normal amount of increase in those hospitals the next few months, we need to double our efforts to improve our own behaviors and behaviors in our community, “said Ghaly.
Meanwhile, California health officials are no longer encouraging everyone who wants to get tested because of the shortage and delays in testing, said Dr. Gil Chávez, co-chair of the state testing force. As the number of tests conducted statewide has increased to record levels, so has the time it takes to get results. Across the state, many residents don’t get their results for nearly two weeks after getting a coronavirus test, causing a significant obstacle to disease control.
A survey released Monday by the California Institute of Public Policy found that more than three in four Californians are concerned that they or someone in their family would become infected with COVID-19. And seven in 10 Californians say they are concerned that the pandemic will have a negative impact on their finances or that of their families.
But just as the disease is disproportionately infecting the state’s Latino population, so are the health and financial concerns caused by the pandemic. According to the survey, Latinos were twice as likely to say they were concerned about their finances and health as their white and Asian counterparts.
