California officials painted a cautious hopeful picture of the pandemic on Monday, the day after reporting the lowest one-day total in more than two months, and when the state on Tuesday closed its largest mass vaccination center at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara County wanted to open. .
But even as COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths have dropped dramatically over the past month and vaccination rates have continued to improve, California’s prospects are still hampered by uncertain vaccine supply and the increasing spread of new coronavirus variants that could lead to a new boom.
On Sunday, California reported just under 8,000 new COVID-19 cases – a drop of 50,000 on January 8 and the first time the state has fallen within 10,000 cases in a day since Thanksgiving. The positive test rate has dropped from 14% to 5% in the past month. Hospitalizations fell by almost a third. In the Bay Area, the number of patients hospitalized with the virus plunged below 1,200 on Sunday for the first time in two months.
“This is indeed encouraging news,” Govin Newsom said at a news conference at the state’s first mass vaccination site, which opened a month ago in Petco Park in San Diego. “However, the vaccines cannot move fast enough.”
With the worst increase in the pandemic, Newsom said it would soon announce plans to reopen schools safely, including the priority of teachers for vaccination. Educators are already at a level allowed by the state to vaccinate, but most provinces do not yet have enough vaccine supplies to offer it.
In the Bay, unions representing San Francisco Unified School District employees have announced a preliminary agreement with the district to reopen the city’s public schools. The agreement may depend on the vaccinations of teachers, depending on how widespread the virus is in the community.
Most of California, including all provinces in the Bay Area, is still experiencing widespread dispatch, meaning they have been assigned to the state’s press level for reopening. Updated data on provinces’ level status is expected on Tuesday.
Dr Rochelle Walensky, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned states on Monday not to loosen the restrictions too quickly, with the transmission rate still dangerously high. The U.S. had 27 million cumulative cases on Monday.
The country reported more than 460,000 COVID-19 deaths as of Monday. In California, more than 44,000 people died from COVID-19, including 4,565 deaths in the Bay. Although the daily death toll is also declining, the Bay Area reported a whopping 109 deaths on Friday, the second deadliest day in the pandemic.
Walensky’s warning comes as California continues to report new cases of more transmissible variants. The state has identified 153 cases of the highly transmissible variant from the UK, Newsom said. Scientists have also identified 1203 cases of two variants that originated in California; it is not yet known whether the variants are more contagious. The state has not yet found any cases of variants from Brazil or South Africa.
Health officials in California and San Francisco said they believe the current vaccines are effective against variants found in the state. But with the new variant spreading rapidly – the one from the UK is expected to dominate in Southern California in a few weeks – public health officials have said there is an urgent need to speed up vaccinations.
On Feb. 15, the state will formalize its partnership with two health care organizations, Blue Shield and Kaiser, to accelerate the distribution of vaccines, Newsom said. California has so far administered 4.65 million vaccines and issued three times as many doses on Sunday as a month ago, he said. But the state still receives just over 1 million doses a week from the federal government.
“We need to see it push up,” Newsom said.
Part of emitting more doses is building more infrastructure. The state’s largest public vaccination site, which will open Tuesday at the Levi’s Stadium of San Francisco 49ers in Santa Clara, will have an initial capacity of 5,000 doses per day that could rise to 15,000.
The state’s vaccination system currently prioritizes health care workers, residents over the age of 65, farm workers, educators and emergencies, but does not yet have enough doses to give to everyone who qualifies. Newsom said Monday it wants to prioritize people with disabilities and high-risk medical conditions.
The state has allocated more than $ 6.6 billion to reopening schools and will also include testing, social distance and ventilation, Newsom said.
“It is my desire to keep our schools safe as soon as possible, especially for our young children, especially children with special needs, foster children, homeless youth, children who do not have access to devices,” he said. “I am confident that we can do this safely.”
Newsom said fear and confidence were the biggest obstacles to reopening schools. In January, there were 87 cases of coronavirus originating from schools in the state, Newsom said. Marin County officials said Monday they have identified ten cases of 17,000 students in the school nearly six months since the resumption of partial personal education.
As the state worries about the reopening of schools, indoor worship services got the green light this past weekend through a Supreme Court ruling. The California Department of Public Health has issued temporary guidelines that provide for indoor services with a capacity of 25% for provinces at the press level.
Santa Clara County initially adhered to its local health ordinance to ban all indoor gatherings, including religious services. But late Monday, the province revised its order to resume domestic services with a capacity of 20%. The county said in a statement that it still “strongly discourages” indoor gatherings of any kind. The order does not allow singing or singing during the indoor services.
Calvary Chapel, a church in San Jose that has been embroiled in a legal battle after defying health orders and holding indoor services, posted a live video on its Facebook page on Sunday showing a group worshiping leads and a pastor who preaches on stage without masks. Church officials were not available for comment Monday.
In San Francisco, the Roman Catholic St. Peter and Paul Church were closed until Feb. 13 after three of the five priests living there contracted the virus, San Francisco Archdiocese Jan Potts said. The individual congregation decided not to reopen for personal services because she did not have the resources to manage them, she said.
“The archbishop wants to make it very clear that it is preferable to keep outside knives,” Potts said. “It’s the safest thing to do, and that’s what science shows.”
San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Aidin Vaziri contributed to this report.
Mallory Moench is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @mallorymoench