A declining 2020 on Thursday delivered a final kick with the province’s health department announcing 62 additional deaths from COVID-19, a new one – day record that would appear on New Year’s Eve.
And there was an extra cause for concern. The provincial public health laboratory, working with local researchers, on Thursday confirmed three more cases of the UK’s coronavirus strain, bringing the total to four, including the initial case involving a man in his 30s. Was announced on Wednesday.
Officials said none of the four were related and had no contact with each other before testing positive.
The three additional cases confirmed Thursday were all men. Case investigators interviewed two of the three who reported no recent travel outside the country. Two of the three new cases were in their 40s and the third in his 50s. The third case for which travel information was not available has not yet been investigated.
They live in La Mesa, Otay Mesa, Mission Beach and the Rancho Bernardo-Carmel area.
The public health lab is still waiting for the results of genetic tests to confirm whether a close contact with Wednesday’s first subject in the UK, who reportedly experienced symptoms of coronavirus infection, also has the British strain.
Dr Eric McDonald, medical director of the province’s epidemiology department, said on Thursday evening that the woman, also a woman in her thirties who is the husband of the UK case, had been admitted to hospital after testing positive for coronavirus. has. Genetic tests performed by Scripps Research will be needed to confirm that the British strain was involved, but it seems very likely at this stage.
“I would be shocked if it did not come back with order for the whole genome that confirms it,” McDonald said.
He said the three additional cases in the UK that were confirmed by genetic tests on Thursday were actually tested between December 20 and December 22. Helix, a local contracting company, went through his records after the first case appeared and discovered the results. as the distinctive “s drop” signature that characterized Wednesday’s case.
He has found cases from different parts of the country that did not know each other, and shows that this tribe, which presumably spreads more easily than other varieties, has been among us for some time.
“It has not only spread to so many different parts of the country among people who have not known each other for the past two weeks,” McDonald said. “The distribution of these cases tells you geographically that it has probably been in the country for a long time.”
With 99 deaths announced in the past two days, December is by far the deadliest month of the pandemic. According to provincial records, 488 deaths were recorded in December, more than twice the previous monthly record of 197 achieved in July.
The latest deaths announced Thursday range between 45 and 100 years and three in their 40s. As always, the deaths announced on a particular day did not all occur the day before the announcement. It can take days or weeks for death certificates and causes of death to be finalized before being reported to the public.
Taking into account the latest group, it appears that a total of 28 deaths occurred on December 22, which captured December 18 for the deadliest day of the pandemic.
McDonald said he was reviewing each death certificate before the country released new figures. He said seeing so much in December was particularly upsetting.
“Each of them is a person and has a family,” McDonald said. “What this means is that more and more San Diego families are beginning to understand the fact that this is a real and deadly pandemic.”
Mortality is what epidemiologists call a ‘backwardness indicator’, which usually sets in weeks or months after infections. As such, an increase in deaths by itself does not say much about how a pathogen like the new coronavirus spreads in a community. The number of new positive cases that occur daily gives an immediate understanding of the current rate of infection.
The final COVID-19 report of 2020 contains 3,083 new cases that again jump over the 3000 mark after three days behind the mark. The result could indicate the arrival of a new wave of cases related to Christmas celebrations, as the average incubation period for the virus – the amount of time spent in the body before symptoms usually begin to appear – is about 6 days, according to US centers for disease control and prevention.
The pressure continues to increase at local hospitals with 1,580 total COVID-19 patients in beds in the country. COVID-positive patients occupied 35 percent of the 4,504 beds in use. Intensive care is stable at 621, 386 have a COVID-19 diagnosis and 235 without.