Press "Enter" to skip to content

November coronavirus surge a ‘train wreck in slow motion’

As the coronavirus pandemic took a steep turn for the worse in November, several Southern California counties ended the month with record numbers of cases and hospitalizations, and deaths have begun to increase in some areas as well.

The increase in cases was “unlike anything we have seen since July when the mask mandates went into effect,” said Brandon Brown, an epidemiologist at UC Riverside. “Since we are transitioning into the colder months when more people will be congregating inside with people from outside their household due to the weather, we can expect the cases to continue rising.”

As hospitalizations skyrocket, “This tells us that there are likely more ICU cases and deaths coming in the near future just by the sheer numbers,” he said.

Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist at UC Irvine, said he is truly worried about how much the virus spread over Thanksgiving and what’s to come this winter.

“We’re not going to just hit the July peak again, we’re going to exceed it,” he said. “We can see this sort of train wreck in slow motion coming, and there’s nothing we can do about it because these cases have already been infected, and they’re going to show up in hospitals.”

Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties reported more new coronavirus cases in November than in any month before.

San Bernardino County added almost 29,000 new cases in November — 30% of the county’s cumulative total since the start of the pandemic. That far surpassed the county’s previous record of just under 20,000 new cases in July, and was almost three times more than the number of cases reported in October.

Los Angeles County added almost 94,000 new cases in November, topping its July record of almost 85,000 new cases and reaching a total of just over 400,000 cases on Monday.

In Orange and Riverside counties, November had the second-highest monthly total of new cases. Orange County added almost 19,000 new cases, shy of July’s total of about 22,000. Riverside County added just over 16,000 new cases, fewer than the 20,000 reported in July.

Adjusting for population, San Bernardino County’s November surge has been far worse than its neighbors. It reported 1,295 new cases per 100,000 residents in November, compared to 914 in L.A. County, 663 in Riverside County and 578 in Orange County.

The number of people hospitalized with confirmed coronavirus cases in Southern California has tripled since Nov. 1, and those numbers are at all-time record levels now in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

L.A. County hospitals reported 2,316 patients on Sunday, according to state hospital survey results released Monday. That broke the county’s record of 2,232 patients on July 18.

Riverside County broke its July record of 550 patients on Saturday, and by Sunday was up to 585 patients hospitalized with COVID-19.

San Bernardino County’s record had been 638 patients on July 25. It tied that the day before Thanksgiving and has since risen to 781 coronavirus patients.

Orange County hospitals have 605 confirmed coronavirus patients, fewer than they had for most of July, but if numbers keep increasing like they have lately, Orange County could top the record of 722 patients in less than a week.

The number of people in the ICU is not quite as dire as it was during the summer, but state officials are worried. In a news conference Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom shared statistics that 74% of ICU beds in Southern California are currently occupied, and officials fear they will reach capacity by mid- to late December unless things change.

Those four counties received the results of more than 1.5 million coronavirus tests in November, and all but Los Angeles County set new monthly records.

While the increased testing was certainly a factor in the increase of confirmed cases, other numbers like increasing hospitalizations and the positivity rate underline that more people are sick with COVID-19 than ever before, Brown and Noymer said.

“While we would expect an increased number of tests to lead to an increased number of cases, the increase of cases is not proportional to the number of tests,” Brown said. “In other words, more of the tests are having a positive result compared to recent months.”

According to data from the state, San Bernardino County’s positivity rate — the percent of tests that come back positive in a seven-day span — was 13.9% on Saturday, up from 11.9% a month earlier. The rate was 10.1% in Riverside County, up from 5.6% at the end of October; 7.6% in Orange County, up from 3.2%; and 6.8% in Los Angeles County, up from 3.7%.

Riverside County reported 123 coronavirus deaths in November, up from 93 in October — the first monthly increase since August, when a record 324 people died from COVID-19.

Los Angeles County’s toll of 585 deaths in November was also up from 494 in October.

Orange and San Bernardino counties, however, reported fewer than half as many deaths than the month before: 94 in Orange County and 51 in San Bernardino County.

Although death rates remain well below their summer peaks, Noymer believes it’s a matter of time before they start to rise again.

“This current surge of cases is going to result in a profound increase in mortality, I guarantee it,” he said, though it may take a few weeks for patients to deteriorate and that information to be processed and reported.

“Case fatality rates will decline somewhat over time as clinical staff get better at treating it, but it’s at the margins,” Noymer said. “There’s no way we’re going to have this surge in hospitalized cases without deaths.”


Source: Orange County Register

Be First to Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *