The hasty reopening of spring in California has turned an oasis of relative calm in the country’s coronavirus outbreak into a viral storm. Now, the first faint symptoms of a minimisation in the outbreak are reviving a familiar and misguided cry of returning to the prestige quo again.
State officials have reported evidence of an epidemic of stabilization or slowdown in recent days, with infections recently shown falling from a peak of nearly 10,000 per day in July to around 7,500 per day last week. The positive test rate also fell from a height of more than 8% last month to 6.3% last week. Confirmed and suspected hospitalizations of COVID-19 have increased from more than 8,000 patients a month ago to less than 6,400.
Three populous counties, Santa Cruz, Placer and San Diego, have been removed from the state’s watch list for the coronavirus spread over the next week, and Gov. Gavin Newsom said San Francisco could stay as early as Thursday.
In addition to bars, indoor eaters, movie theaters, and other closed state businesses, indexed counties are required to close gyms, offices and non-essential lounges, among other activities. But a San Francisco salon owner led a motion to reopen one’s business in defiance of orders this week, and San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer complained that the state had not provided rules to resume prohibited activities in counties that are not under surveillance. “The lack of a coherent procedure for these companies, with logical, data-driven triggers, exacerbates an increasingly complicated economic scenario and undermines the credibility and respect for the state’s lawful public order,” Faulconer wrote in a letter to Newsom.
The governor said the rules are coming, promising that the closures “are not a permanent state.” But the resumption of high-risk activities is unlikely to be greater than it was two months ago until infection rates are below and state and local governments have the ability to seek and hint at new outbreaks that will inevitably appear.
By maximum measures, the state is in a worse position now than on its first aborted return to normal. New infections are still showed at more than double the rate observed in May, and the proportion of tests that detect the virus is at a highest rate. Officials have just just corrected a breakdown of the knowledge that has left the state in the dark about the true extent of the epidemic. And recent fluctuations in the number of hospitalizations have led Newsom to warn that the downward trend continues.
The 120,000 tests conducted in a consistent manner with the day are a dramatic improvement during the first months of the pandemic, but remain well below the number that experts are required to suppress the spread. In addition, barriers to access and delays in effects cause many state tests to die to curb the spread.
“We’re here as a point 0 for COVID in the U.S. And, six months later, we’re still struggling,” Santa Clara County’s head of health Sara Cody said Tuesday at the opening of a drive-talk service site designed to drive up to 1,000 tests a day at the San Jose Fairgrounds. “The explanation for why we keep fighting is because we didn’t have the equipment to get us out. One of the most vital equipment to get us out is the test: test, test, test.”
Since a woman from San Jose became the first known death in the United States from coronavirus headaches in February, more than 170,000 followed, adding more than 11,000 in California and 1,000 in the Bay Area. Until our ability to trip over the virus exceeds its ability to spread, the resumption of the massive industry and contact will exacerbate this daunting cost.
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