California and the Bay Area continue to see a steady decline in coronavirus cases and positive test rates, suggesting the region is finally on the low side of this summer’s record highs caused by successive waves of submicron COVID-19 cases.
But even if the worst is over, the number of virus in the community remains much higher than in April and hospitalizations – a lagging indicator of infection rates – are still high.
Health officials are wary of complacency and the emergence of new immune versions of the virus that could extend the pandemic into the fall. They advise people to protect themselves from infection or re-infection through vaccinations, respirators and voluntary closed masks.
“We’re definitely in a better place, but we can’t ignore the virus,” said Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at UCSF. “Things can be unpredictable.”
Although the peak of cases was a few weeks ago, the change in reported numbers has made it impossible to believe the downward trend.
As of Friday, the Bay Area had an average of 34 coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents, according to state data. This is 35% less than a month ago. But it remains well above the baseline rate of 6 cases per 100,000 seen in April after the onset of winter omicron.
The decline in cases is highlighted by a recent decline in the number of coronavirus particles found in Bay Area sewage samples. Sewage monitoring can provide a broader view of community virus concentrations because it captures each person’s discharge and does not depend on whether people get tested or whether they use a rapid home antigen test kit.
California is seeing 37 cases per 100,000 residents, up from about 50 per 100,000 in July. On Friday, the state surpassed 10 million reported cases of COVID since the pandemic began.
“This is a longer phase of contagion than we’ve had in the past,” San Mateo County Health Officer Louise Rogers said in an update this week. He cited the spread of the immune-resistant BA.5 omicron subvariant, which causes new infections and reinfections, even among people who carry the original omicron variant.
Hospitalizations are slowly declining statewide, but flat in the Bay Area. The average number of people hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19 in California per day increased from 3,500 in early July to 4,686 by the end of the month, according to the Department of Health. This represents an increase of 34% in one month.
The Bay Area reported 883 people hospitalized with COVID-19 on Friday, up from 748 on July 4. The death toll remains well below previous phases of the pandemic, holding steady at about 42 per day statewide.
The state’s positive test rate, which tracks the average number of coronavirus tests, remains close to 15% — down slightly from the most recent peak of 16% in mid-July.
Infectious disease experts believe the rate should be below 5% to effectively control the spread of the virus.
Dr. Bob Wachter, chairman of UCSF’s department of medicine and an expert on pandemics, said the estimated cases could be roughly counted. one-fifth of current cases due to the widespread use of unreported home tests to authorities. But the trend line for the official accounts is downward.
Despite the overall improvement, only three of California’s 58 counties — Lassen, Plumas and San Luis Obispo — were classified as having “low” community levels of COVID-19 as of Friday, according to data released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. .
Another 27 counties, mostly in the eastern half of the state but including the cities of Marin and Santa Cruz, were rated with “moderate” levels of community COVID-19. And nearly every major population center, including most of the Bay Area and beyond, is rated as having a “high” level of community.
The CDC strongly recommends a universal closed mask for counties under this classification.
Many residents of the region want to put the pandemic behind them. They have largely shunned masks and other coronavirus safety measures, helping the region weather past waves better than other places.
Schools will reopen in the next two months without masks, testing and vaccinations. As local airports return to pre-pandemic numbers and major events return to the Bay Area’s cultural calendar, people are moving and congregating more freely.
Golden Gate Park hosts the Outside Lands Festival with 75,000 attendees each day, followed by the free Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in October, which draws up to 200,000 attendees each day.
“The truth is we’re in a COVID world and it’s going to be like this for the foreseeable future,” said Allen Scott, founder of Outside Lands and president of concerts and festivals at Berkeley-based Another Planet Entertainment. “I think people have given up on living with it.”
According to Chin-Hong, we are unlikely to see a return to large-scale community restrictions, but targeted, temporary measures could be taken if numbers begin to rise again.
“You can imagine temporary mask mandates in schools if teachers and staff start to get sick, as we’ve seen with BART and other micro-environments,” he said. “We know they work.”
He attributes the poor attitude to the spate of infections in the past few months.
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“The biggest thing is that a lot of people have gotten it now,” he said. “If you’ve been through it, you have no fear of the unknown. You might be thinking, “What if I get it back?” – you might think. It is now tangible. People are fed up and they are willing to take that risk.”
Sonoma County Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase told supervisors on Tuesday that the worst outcomes of COVID-19 — hospitalizations, intensive care unit admissions and deaths — are at a better level compared to the summer waves of 2020 and 2021, but stressed that we are not out of the woods.
“My message to the public is to be vigilant,” Mase said. “Covid is with us and we need to take precautions if we don’t want to get sick. Social responsibility is where we are now.”
While the Gulf region’s health care systems may be overburdened, new challenges lie ahead. In addition to the possibility of new variants of the coronavirus, fall could bring an influx of flu and monkeypox cases competing for medical resources.
“There are other threats to hospital beds,” Chin-Hong said. “All of this puts a strain on the health care system.”
Chronicle staff writer Katherine Ho contributed to this report.
Aydin Waziri (he) is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: avaziri@sfchronicle.com