The San Francisco Department of Public Health provides updates daily at 9 a.m. We will do the same.
The latest count shows 40 new confirmed cases and no new deaths.
In the past two weeks, we have averaged 36 new cases a day and a total of seven deaths. Public health officials want to see new cases drop to no more than 6.3 cases a day for 14 consecutive days and no new deaths for the same time period.
On Saturday, there were 53 COVID-positive patients hospitalized in San Francisco: 34 in Acute Care Units, and 19 in Intensive Care Units. That represents the lowest number of ICU hospitalizations since March 25. Those are good numbers, and it is clear the city will go ahead with the partial re-opening that begins today.
The city announced Monday the creation of three new testing sites: one at City College’s Ocean Campus, another in Bayview-Hunters Point, and a mobile site initially stationed in the Tenderloin. The Tenderloin location is the first mobile site in San Francisco and will begin offering walk-through testing starting Wednesday. Online appointments are “strongly encouraged,” but on-site staff will also be available to help those who can’t register online.
Testing in San Francisco is available to essential and frontline workers working in the city, regardless of where they live or if they are experiencing any symptoms. Testing is also available for adults living in San Francisco if they are experiencing symptoms, or if they have had contact with a COVID-positive person in the last 14 days. The tests are available free of charge and do not require health insurance or a doctor’s note. More information on how to schedule a test is available at sf.gov/citytestsf, or by calling 311.
In a joint statement on Monday from five Bay Area counties, including San Francisco, health officers said the supply of personal protective equipment has improved, but “shortages continue in certain healthcare settings.”
For those wanting to keep track of the metrics that the city is using to inform its re-opening decisions, Dr. Grant Colfax, the director of the Department of Public Health, showed this slide to the supervisors on Tuesday.
The better metrics led to Mayor London Breed’s Tuesday announcement that 95 percent of all businesses in the city will be allowed to reopen today for curbside pickup and delivery. This includes most retail businesses with street access.
But experts warn that “we may be taking a greater risk than we should be taking” with the reopening of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Although testing rates have improved, they are still far below the city’s total capacity of 5,800 residents a day.
- Source: SF Department of Public Health.
Dr. Cofax and San Francisco Health Officer Dr. Tomas Aragón addressed this issue on Tuesday, promising “universal access” at some point in the future.
At present, the Department of Public Health has the capacity to run 2,100 tests through its labs with a total public/private capacity to run 5,800 tests a day.
The city’s goal is two tests per 1,000 residents. “We’re clearly above that number,” said Aragón said on Tuesday.
He called pharmacies being able to test a “game-changer,” that will allow food handlers, for example, to get tested easily and on a regular basis. Just when that will begin is unclear.
As the city re-opens, Dr. George Rutherford, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at UCSF, said at UCSF’s town hall on Tuesday that “masks are going to become more and more and more important” in preventing the spread of the virus. “We’re talking about masks as a source control against droplet spread,” he said. “Meaning you’re wearing the mask to prevent you from infecting other people.”
Making them mandatory – which the city has yet to do except for residents waiting in lines or inside stores – has yet to happen, but Rutherford appeared to suggest that would be a good idea. Wearing cloth masks, he said, can translate into a decrease in transmission in the order of 80 percent. “It’s one thing to recommend it,” he said. “It’s another thing to make it mandatory.” Studies show that compliance increases substantially when masks are mandatory, he said.
Masks, social distancing and washing one’s hands will only increase in importance as the city re-opens. These all impact the reproductive rate of the virus – known as the R factor. More residents out and about will mean more opportunities for the virus to spread.
“What’s striking about this is that the more we move around, the more the virus is transmitted,” said Dr. Grant Colfax, the director of the Department of Public Health. “If the reproductive rate goes just above one, the virus will continue to spread throughout our community. If it’s just below one, even point nine, the virus will slow.”
Meanwhile, the rate of COVID-19 in the Latinx population continued to get worse with the figure jumping from 41 percent to nearly 43 percent of the cases.
Other stories to help you catch up on the pandemic and other news:
- Miss seeing the rest of San Francisco? Browse through our photo essays from different parts of the city.
- If you want to hear the top doctors talk about the coronavirus, join Thursday’s grand rounds at UCSF or read our summation of last week’s here.
- Sonoma County has an updated dashboard of cases and deaths in all Bay Area counties that is useful to look at.
- And here is their dashboard for the world, the U.S. and California.
As you have probably noted in the graphs below, there is a discrepancy between the total number of positive test results reported by the city and the total daily number of confirmed cases. The discrepancy comes from a delay in fully investigating positive test results. In doing so, health investigators find some duplicates and some are for people who live outside of the city, according to epidemiologists at the Department of Public Health. New cases are only added to the daily confirmed cases after an investigation is completed.
Also, there is also a discrepancy between the hospitalization data reported by the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) and the county hospital data reported by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH). This is because SFDPH receives data from one additional hospital, San Francisco VA Health Care System, that is not required to report to CDPH. “SFDPH statistics will trend higher as long as this hospital has patients admitted as either COVID-19 positive or suspected COVID-19 positive.”
Lydia Chávez contributed to this report.
***
It feels like we are at societal breaking point in the sweet land of liberty.
And the main authorities choose lies to keep the public’s spirits up.
Keep Calm and Mask on
it’s white people with perceived Marvel Superhero, Assgardian Genes spreading it to the weak and poor minorities. You see them jogging, having a picnic with no mask or social distancing. I wish I was strong like them.
The supervisor slide says 1,597 avg tests per day which doesn’t have any relationship to the data tables updated every day on this page where there are only two days that even come close to that level. That mathematically isn’t possible. Please review and consider explaining. Thx.
Cannot understand why dine in restaurants are open anywhere, they inherently cannot comply with mask requirements. This is a slap in the face to those most at risk. Risk of DEATH, that’s it for them, the end, just a trail of broken hearts of family.
Today, May 14, there are 5 new cases, confirmed as of 5pm May 13. Yesterday there were 17 new cases, but for whatever reason the dashboard is showing a combined 22 cases, however, if you look at the daily totals, 17 yesterday and 5 today is correct, not 22.
The testing results graph is also not properly calibrated, the percent positive line does not reflect the numerical value shown below, including a figure of over 100% positive test results on or around May 1… It is also noteworthy that every day the quantity of test results and positives reported the previous day changes. I’m guessing this is because the results are added back to the day the test was taken and not when the results are received.
“The latest count shows 22 new confirmed cases and no new deaths.”
this seems to be a *2-day* count, according to the numbers in the table that follow: 1977 on May 11, and 1999 through May 13. the one-day count given in the table is 1999 – 1994 = 5. which is the .3% mentioned in the headline.
These numbers reported on May 14 do not add up. The text says “The latest count shows 22 new confirmed cases” while the numbers show the cumulative cases being 1,999 up from 1,994 the day before which means that there were 5 new cases instead of 22.
Making masks mandatory outside? Really George? Which masks? How about “face coverings”? Why not make masks/face coverings mandatory in homes where most of the transmissions occur and, because people generally breathe and talk at home, so a load of aerosol droplets can congregate (and last up to 8 hours according to a recent piece in the NYT)? Of course it hasn’t been shown that the virus is transmitted airborne though an aerosol, or that simple cloth face coverings can prevent the tiny aerosol droplets from getting into the air, but let’s not quibble about “the science”. Better to be safe than sorry.
Joe—thanks for compiling this helpful data. I’m confused by the presentation of the testing results table, which is the first one I jump to every morning: it shows the number of positive tests and the number of tests performed, but it looks like we’re graphing against two unrelated y-axis markers (left in the thousands, right in the tens). It doesn’t seem to track the percentage of positive results against total tests, which seems the most relevant information out of this set. Am I reading this incorrectly? Is there some reason why 30/1000 is an important mark?
Erika —
Thank you for reading our site! I am not the author or driving force behind this feature. Credit where credit is due to Loi and Lydia.
I am also not as knowledgeable on the ins, outs, and what-have-yous of the finer points of the data. But I do know some people. I’ll ask around and hopefully come up with a decent answer for you.
Yours,
JE
Hey Joe –
FYI, by my calcs, the total # of Positives = 2763 (3/3-5/12) — not 1994 cited by DHP. The total # of tests performed = 39,293; which gives us a 7.0% rate of positive cases.
I won’t add up the Deaths (who’d fudge that figure, eh?); but I wonder why the discrepancy of 1994 vs 2763. Eh?
I think this is specifically answered in the introduction above the data:
“As you have probably noted in the graphs below, there is a discrepancy between the total number of positive test results reported by the city and the total daily number of confirmed cases. The discrepancy comes from a delay in fully investigating positive test results. In doing so, health investigators find some duplicates and some are for people who live outside of the city, according to epidemiologists at the Department of Public Health. New cases are only added to the daily confirmed cases after an investigation is completed.”
Sorry Loi and Lydia! Joe’s just been lurking in the comments over here. Thanks so much for the hard work keeping us up to date.
Perhaps a radical idea: what about finding a way to spread out the positive tested Covid-19 Latino community into short term housing (i.e. what the City is trying to do with the homeless).
Goal: limiting exposure of positive infected Covid-19 Latinos from the densely populated Mission community
Aim: Minimizing exposure of Latino families that need to continue their own day to day ability to provide for themselves
Admittedly not a perfect solution but perhaps a method the BOS and Mayor might get these community members assistance
Appreciate input not insults. 😉
Sam —
Your idea would appear to be what the city is now attempting to do. The rooms in some of the grand hotels set aside for first-responders (but unused at an 80- to 90-percent clip, despite our paying for them) are now being opened up to low-income essential workers. I am told this was a result of the UCSF four-day COVID-19 test-a-thon in the Mission.
https://missionlocal-newspack.newspackstaging.com/2020/05/covid-san-francisco-hotel-empty/
I’m curious why the total tests performed figure is not stated. We are given a cumulative Positive and Cumulative Deaths but not a Cumulative Tests Performed
They are wearing the wrong n95 masks! These protect them but not others because they have the vent. If they had a non symptomatic case of covid 19, they just spread it more going door to door in those masks!!
Wait, is this true, First time I’m heard the idea that using N95 mask endanger others.
Apparently, a few layers of bandana or folds of a shirt, or the cheapest disposable dust masks are acceptable, but front vented n95 masks are endangering everyone….
Only 4% of those tested this last week in the Mission have been exposed? I was sure it would be 20% or something. But only 4%? That would mean that we have pretty much stifled the virus (pat on the back) but also that we are where we were in early March facing the virus. Almost none of us have had it. Without a game changing treatment that means that we will be faced with a choice between store fronts covered in plywood or a wave of infections for the rest of 2020. Open the schools and see the infection spread among well children and taken home to kill old and sickly folks in their homes. No easy exit here.
Hey Karl —
This is good news, but we can’t compare these numbers to earlier numbers so easily. Earlier testing was highly selective and you had to demonstrate symptoms or a contact with a sick individual to get one. This was universal (among folks living in the sample area). So the lower percentage is what you’d expect of a broader testing base. Comparing the numbers — or mixing them as overall data — is problematic.
Best,
JE
Today’s report noted that Mission District still has the most number of confirmed cases in city at 187, and that it ranks fifth at 25 confirmed cases per 10,000 residents. When the number of confirmed cases in zip codes were first reported on 4/20, Mission District (94110) had 171 cases. Over 8 days, the 94110 increase was 16 cases or 9%.
North of Mission / western SOMA (94103) is highest in city with 45 confirmed cases per 10,000 residents. 94103 went from 80 cases on 4/20 to 117 cases on 4/28. Over the same 8 days, the 94103 increase was 37 cases or 46%.
The number of tests and the percent of positive tests are not published per zip code so it cannot be determined if the difference is due to testing or reflects an actual difference in rate of infection. Note “rate of infection” here refers to how fast the infection is spreading and not to the number of cases per 10,000 residents as used in today’s report. Over a longer period of time, the change in number of confirmed cases per zip code could possibly provide a basis for comparing how fast the infection is spreading in different zip code areas during that period of time.
Just three weeks ago, Doctor Fauci lowered the estimate of US deaths from 200,000 to 60,000, but here we are at over 60,000 deaths. And it doesn’t seem to have ended.
Thanks for reporting the numbers.
I am confused by the two sets of hospitalization data that don’t quite agree with eachother – can the editors/author explain? for example, in the section titled ‘Hospitalizations throughout San Francisco’, for April 25 it says under confirmed cases that there were 54 in acute care plus 31 in ICU for a total of 85 hospitalized patients. under suspected cases, the breakdown is 38 in acute care and 4 in ICU, for a total of 42 suspected. but if you scroll down to the section titled ‘Hospital Data – San Francisco County’, the numbers for April 25 are: 73 total (not 85), 29 ICU (not 31), and suspected 18 total (not 42) and 3 ICU (not 4).
Coronavirus is on every Continent – it arrived via Mass Transportation
MUNI & Coronavirus – UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED – MASKS ARE NOT ENOUGH TO STOP IT
“This is not a replacement for staying home and physical distancing, but it is an important step for safety.”
Mayor London Breed – April 17, 2020 – ‘Mask directive Tweet’
Below – advice from APTA – American Public Transit Association
“Separate people from the contamination” Plexiglas barriers for drivers
“Social Distancing”
Maintain a space of 3-6 feet between persons
Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority
Placed seat-blocking placards
to prevent riders from sitting too close to each other
https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uploads/APTA-Coronavirus-Brief-03-05-20.pdf APTA’s COVID-19 Bulletin – 4/24/2020
SFMTA MUNI – Has not implemented necessary devices & enforcement for ‘Social Distancing’. Mayor Breed, declared a ‘State of Emergency’ and can order them to do so. Contact the Mayors Office!
When people are waiting for a bus, they are pedestrians. Once people are on a bus, they are passengers. MUNI must take every precaution, when passengers leave the bus, they are not infected pedestrians!
Contact your District Supervisor & SF Health Department, demand action to protect the riding public.
Please pass this along to friends, family, employers and concerned public officials
Michael B. Cheney – Retired San Francisco Civil Servant / ‘Mr. Fix-It’ SF Weekly, June 2013
https://archives.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/mr-fix-it-a-mechanic-turns-from-trying-to-save-muni-to-trying-to-save-the-world/ Content?oid=2826403
How do you expect to enforce all the homeless nuts who jump on muni? We don’t enforce another illegal activity they do (all of which cause us danger)?
Do you find anything striking about the numbers?
“all 22 people who have died had underlying health conditions while 21 people were over 60 years old.”
what is the yearly rate of premature death in SF? are we going to use the number above to establish what is the new acceptable rate for all premature death related to un-necessary activities in the city?
What about all the people that have critical medical conditions that could not get treated and will results in premature death?
It’s tiresome being older and constantly having to dodge others who couldn’t care less. I wish the face-covering requirement was enforced. At Ocean Beach April 25 few wore coverings, although most Asians did. I wish the national and local press would attempt to stay focused on the issues and facts and keep asking the same unanswered questions — Why no enforcement, and why are some states/ locales opening up while new cases are not declining? Does that mean current rates of new case counts and deaths are acceptable? Is that the message leaders want to communicate to those couldn’t care less? What is the acceptable trade-off for COVID-19 risks versus economic and related risks? What is the plan to obtain and distribute masks? Produce and distribute a vaccine when one becomes available? What is the federal government doing to make it possible to get to a day when it is safe to engage in normal economic activity? – For example, is any factor beyond profit motive really driving production of effective testing; PPE production/availability; preparation for producing and rolling out a vaccine; funding research on understanding and treating COVID-19-related ARDS, kidney failure, blood-clotting strokes and arrhythmia? This disease is ICU hell. Media need to hold officials’ feet to the fire. Journalists should dig in and push back, not look for new, shiny objects every day, and they should not go off on stories telling people how they can distract themselves while putting up with the insufficiently reported failures of American power brokers to anticipate and respond forcefully and effectively to protect the public health and economy at large.
I agree that it’s frustrating, but people appear to be reaching their limits of how long they can be cooped up. The weather is glorious, and I’ve seen an enormous amount of people hanging out in the parks and greenbelts around the city, with impromptu sidewalk gatherings and even parties everywhere. I’ve witnessed two rooftop parties and a commotion of people hanging out on the sidewalk with beer and wine in open containers they bought at a take-out place. I live in the Marina, not the Mission, but people here appear to be throwing caution to the wind. Very few face masks in public as well. I fear we’ll be having a resurgence of cases within the next two weeks.
I would’ve called the cops if I saw a rooftop party.
The President just suggested people consider injecting themselves with disinfectants.
Doctors looking on did not directly interrupt and say “whoa whoa whoa…”
I want names and locations of asses to kick on this RIGHT NOW, medical certification boards!
PEOPLE ARE DYING IN THIS COUNTRY AND WE’RE ALLOWING THIS TO CONTINUE FOR REPUBLICAN POLITICS?
Then the wrong people are dying of this disease and god help us all if every last one of these Jim Jordan types has to physically GO before they admit it’s a serious thing! 50,000 DEAD AND THAT IDIOT WON’T WEAR A MASK? Officer arrest that IDIOT and be careful about it!
I like the ground rounds at UCSF
Campers,
You have to have caught this episode, of …
“How to teach your child to do online interviews ….”
https://abc7news.com/mission-local-joe-eskenazi-london-breed-the-atlantic-coronavirus-san-francisco-bay-area-california/6111068/
Kid’s name is Leo and he’s got some energy.
Eskenazi’s the best political writer in town for years now.
Go Giants!
h.
Yesterday you reported 814 tests were done on Friday with 259 positive for covid. Was this wrong? What happened to that data – it doesn’t seem reflected in the current totals.
Thanks
I am still wondering causes for these unexplained math results of 260 positive cases in a day, but not shown in the results, or even data disappearing?
Could it be that of the 260 positive cases in one day, that 220 of them lived in San Mateo or Marin? Seems like too big of an unexplained error.
Could it be that it takes days to get back the results. So 800 tests were done, but that creates a backlog to get results back so the positives are spread out over a week.
Anyway, several of the commenting readers, seem to have this concern. Thanks for the info.
The numbers for Fri Apr 17 changed from yesterday to today (Apr 18-19). ‘CityTestSF, the city’s newest testing facility for frontline workers and eligible residents, opened and began drive-through operations on Friday. On the same day, San Francisco tested 814 persons and 32 percent came back positive with COVID-19. This is the highest number of testings done throughout the city in one day. It also shows the highest positive testing rate…’ That’s 814 tests with 259 positive. Now it shows a meager 454 tests with only 10%, 45 positive. The fact that the number of confirmed cases on any given day never matches the positive test count on the same day is asinine, but when the testing results can just disappear, it’s hard to believe that any of the numbers are real.
The test numbers continue to change. Yesterday Apr 22 showed less than 300 tests with over 25% positive, now nearly 600 with 15%…. This change seems to happen every time there is a high percentage of positive results.
“”On the same day, San Francisco tested 814 persons and 32 percent came back positive with COVID-19.””
That’s scary high **32%* positive.
I didn’t always pay attention in math class, but wouldn’t 32% be about 260 positive, but the Total results didn’t go up that much in a day. Can some explain for me?
anything you can do about the bar chart in the ‘suspected’ cases section moving from right-to-left instead of the expected left-to-right? this threw me off for a minute.
thank you, looks fixed today!
Curious if there are any demographics on the new cases. We’re all quarantined, so curious if the new cases are from hospital workers, bus drivers, people violating the quarantine? Let’s tighten this up!
“The latest daily count of six new confirmed cases is the lowest daily count recorded since March 20 when the city reported 8 new cases.”
6 is lower than 8. This is a common nonsensical mistake in journalism that I really don’t understand.
This sentence should have read: “The latest daily count of six new confirmed cases is the lowest daily count recorded since March 16 when the city reported three new cases; six new cases were also reported on March 19.”
How come they never release any informations on the victims, as they do in every other city?
Does anyone know why the number of positive tests reported on the testing results table above and in the SF Data Tracker on DataSF is not consistent with the number of new cases reported daily by the SF department of health?
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Cases in San Francisco
Total Positive Cases: 797
Deaths: 13
updated daily at 9:00 AM
At this point are the new cases being driven by additional testing or continued spread? Do we know? I’d love to get some insight on that.
Compared to Sonoma’s coverage (https://sonomacounty.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=21a1653b79ba42039ff22bcb85f%20a5b19) San Francisco County’s communication is embarrassing, considering we’re the epicenter of the tech world.
Thanks for your service on this.
It might be worth noting that the SF Data Tracker on DataSF and the data in your table is not consistent. The data from PDH that was updated once a day was probably not consistently reported and often delayed.
I’m noticing that the new data shows a more consistent declining growth rate in the last few days whereas the old data was all over the place.
A group of us are organizing a grassroots volunteer effort to track hospital beds/ventilator capacity numbers by asking people working inside the hospital to share anonymously on a daily basis.
This is critical for rapid response. Not so much for the public, but for the teams in the hospitals to coordinate with neighboring regional hospitals. When the surge hits an area, this information is know where patients can be moved or rerouted.
Given the speed of this pandemic, we feel it is going to be most effective to just bypass the current system and enable person-to-person information sharing. We received no reply back from our contact requests with Dept of Health at city and state level, so we’re not going to wait until the surge is here.
We are using free tools everyone already knows and uses (google sheets, facebook, html, etc)
We have a website up with the current numbers by hospital, separated by state. These floor/ICU bed numbers are just baseline from census, not updated by us yet. All relevant links are here:
https://valis.pub/hospitals
Additionally, we have a charting tool that show current data by county, state, and US county. You can pick which areas of interest to compare, and share the charts quickly.
https://valis.pub
You could probably get this data into ArcGIS, same as Sonoma:
https://sonomacounty.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=21a1653b79ba42039ff22bcb85f%20a5b19
It would be a HUGE help
I heard in South Korea, people get notified on where about the infected person has been around, so that people could avoid that area for a while until disinfecting team go into the place first to clean that area, so that if you were in the same path as the infected person about the same time in that area, you know you have to get tested immediately. They check the infected person’s route by cell phone tracing, credit card usage data, and by interviewing infected person. All this happens literally immediately, so that it could go out to people via text message at once without revealing the person’s name. It says e.g. “woman in 50′ found positive for coronavirus, she took #38 bus on x-day between 8~9am…. etc. etc. ” revealing all the routes. I think it’s a great system to get text message immediately and just be very open about it, so that we all know the fact. Another big thing is that I’ve been insisting wearing mask since January. I hardly can’t believe our Gov. could be this stupid until now. Mask is a common sense 1,2,3. Instead of waiting for perfect mask, just wear anything available for now. It’ll protect you and others around you. People who was talking so smart that regular mask wouldn’t protect you… blah blah blah, OMG! They need to wake up! 50% protection is better than nothing. On top of that, if you sneeze, it’ll protect other people around you. More chance to save lives. And I wouldn’t recommend not wearing shoes at home. This is another common sense 1,2,3 that people are missing out. God help us all!
the cdc lowered their standard to accommodate the lack of supply. so they said no mask. then everyone started parroting the same message on tv.
Same thing in China. In additon to fast and detailed tracing, there are apps in China you can use to search and see if you’ve been on the same public transportation with confirmed cases; and to find out if you’ve been within three rows.
COMMENT I meant to say that I wouldn’t recommend wearing shoes at home.
Let assume that everyone is getting the virus .. well by this time now i wouldnt surprise if we didnt without having any contact with someone who carried the virus.. its basically in the air. unfortunately, we all infected…yes!..thats individual wh fought through this viruses yet is still a carriers. we can transfer it to the next person we have contacted..therefore, this is why we were told to Shelter-In-Place to prevent it spread.. i just dont understand why people panic and act out their character. this isnt the time for us to be panic. this is the time to listen and to understand.. being panic is not going to help you live.. its only going to give other people headache and. just stay put and listen. all we need to do is take care and stay healthy .. think positive and get through it in a positive way. you will live. i can gaurantee you that..no more complaining, no blaming, no panicking, stop all the negative, stop being selfish, if we can take all that off our chest maybe we can breathe easily.. maybe just that.. everything will be good again… STAY AT HOME..for you, for me, for everyone.. ××jn♡××
Wow! Annie, you’re great. Finally we have someone smart like you, speak about the truth. My high school alumni went to an international trip, total of 12 people, when one got sick, notify the rest of the group members. They were scattered all over the US. Then they know to go to hospital to get treatment and stop spreading to other people. People in charge here don’t have epidemiology knowledge.
COMMENT Hi Shirley, It seems that you don’t have to be a scientist to know some basics. If you study some of the Asian countries people are wearing masks, and they have slower spread than us here and in Europe. May God help us all. Happy Easter!!!
I hear you! I too thought it was CRAZY to tell people not to wear masks. I understand it was an attempt to keep people from hoarding N95’s but it didn’t work.
The county is now posting more data, with graphs and everything: https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/fjki-2fab.
Good story, Loi Almeron! It’s so important to let the public know what is known and not known, and why.
ya, it doesn’t have to be an either-or scenario – sonoma county is having no problem. Beyond that the bay area is full of people with backgrounds in biological sciences who understand that data (not to mention loads of data scientists), and even if someone doesn’t have that background doesn’t mean the data shouldn’t be shared
San Francisco may have one of the “least robust websites”, but it also has one of the best responses to the pandemic in the entire country.
It’s about priorities. To me, keeping people alive and healthy is an order of magnitude more important than having a “dashboard” for armchair epidemiologists to fiddle around with. Not even close.
Joe —
San Francisco is part of the six-county shelter-in-place order. Other counties under the same order are providing much, much more data.
I’m not sure why you think a robust response and robust data reporting are an either-or. Why would that make sense?
Requesting San Francisco to provide data at the level of Santa Clara, Sonoma, or Solano County isn’t a Herculean ask.
Yours,
JE
San Francisco did had a good start,
but we’re now weeks in, and there is still a continuing failure on handling homeless, and hand washing stations, and tracing.
The flip flopping on Moscone Center and Palace of Fine Arts as further example.
Muni doesn’t inform which buses were driven by Coronavirus positive driver to facilitate tracing.
I wouldn’t shoot the messenger. Thanks for the work that you are doing.
Thank you SO much for aggregating this data. It’s crazy that SFDPH isn’t doing this (publicly, at least.) As I haven’t seen our data plotted on a graph, I did it myself:
https://plotly.com/~lateralfilms/4.embed
I’ll try to keep it updated.
Thank you for that. Its a surprise to me that the death rate seems to be at 1.3% of confirmed cases; higher than flu (0.!~%). but not the 3-5% earlier predicted.
I think this data is WAY too shaky to deduce anything about death rate. I’m sure there are many, many asymptomatic or mild cases not reflected here, as well as deaths that weren’t reported as Covid-19.
You should not be surprised. Death rate will be lower when health systems are not over run. Issue in Italy, Spain and initial weeks in NYC is that when health systems are completely overrun mortality is higher.
In response to Robert below, there absolutely are many asymptomatic or mild cases diagnosed. That said, even when taking into consideration the deaths not attributed to COVID, the death rate is around 1-1.5%.
– B.R. M.D.
I read that Los Angeles county posts detailed information showing locations of outbreak clusters- I think SF should be doing the same thing. If we could see a map that shows where clusters of outbreaks are taking place I think it would help a LOT.
Stop being misleading with your titles. You knowingly wrote the title to make it seem as if the death rate was 8% not a total of 8. This is basic in writing about statistical information, you don’t jump from percentages to a total number.
You are part of the problem. The title should be something such as: cases up 7.4%, deaths at 1.4%.
Or are you intentionally trying to spread more fear and panic?
Calm down, boss. When we use the word “percent” it means “percent” and when we list a number, it means it is the number we said it was.
Please don’t tell us what our motivations are. You don’t know what our motivations are, and misleading people is never our goal.
Also, you could always read the article. I find this helps.
Yours,
JE
I have no problem with presentation of the information on your website in general and grateful that you do show us what is really going on, but I have a concern that as total numbers climb up, the percentage is going down – for example at the early stage when we had only one person dead, the next one was a 100% increase, then after we had 3d person pass away – it suddenly became 50%, etc. Now the next one will bring it up something like 7.1%.
These % going down can give a false sense of security while in fact we are still not out of the woods.
I would remove % from number of passed away all together or calculate it as percentage of currently in hospitals.
I just love your replies. Thanks for some regular chuckles.
Well said by why let facts get in the way of anger Read something?
SF is looking alot better than nyc. All you gotta know.
The thing is, were flights to resume and stores and restaurants to reopen, within 3 days you’re going to have new hotspots.
We won’t know it, no one can – WE DO NOT HAVE TESTING CAPACITY. It’s the missing piece to even beginning this!
The whole idea of reducing restrictions before we even have a roughest idea of who has the virus right now, it’s insane.
Florida, the south, the midwest, all exploding into their up to 14 day incubation periods as we speak.
It would be here within days. The whole shutdown to date will have been pointless or at best a stall to shift resources.
If we think that because we’re doing better that means we can let our guard down, the entire shutdown will be for naught.
We’re going to see hundreds of thousands dead by the time this is over. More than 1.
Doc here. Our rates are incredibly low for population density. SF has arguably the best health systems in the country btwn Kaiser, UCSF and Sutter. We are and will continue to lead the way. Actual Covid numbers are globally underreported. Percentage of positive cases will continue to rise given that the virus takes so long to clear (some individuals are continuing to test positive 35+ days after symptoms resolve.)
If you’re high risk strategy is simple, stay inside and continue to socially distance.
This site was created for “progressive” alarmists. Not sure why so many people need the fine data. Most of you can’t properly interpret it, which brings us back to everyone following the recommends which have everyone’s best interest in mind.
10k hotel rooms could open today, from treating this population on a daily basis, most of the visible chronic homeless would not go inside.
-BR, M.D.
Why not also publish those who recovered so we may find hope somehow during this pandemic of the unknown.
Thank you for this series.
Am I mis-understanding or am I spotting an error?
The section
COMPARISON: DATA RECEIVED TODAY FROM 7 DAYS AGO
seems to actually be the data from 1 day ago.
Thanks
I agree Sus. The 39 figure appears to be from one day ago, as you note, but has to do with ICU positive cases reported, not total positive cases.
It would be great if you would ask for testing numbers, testing availability, cases, hospitalizations, ICU beds used, ventilators in use and available, as well as deaths. And projections.
And where are we in the triage protocol?
We really should have complete and current information from SF DPH. Very frustrating to be left in the dark out here.
I agree with Elizabeth Zitrin, I am high risk, sheltering in place. We should be able to see the relevant information and to have some idea about when more testing and antibody testing will be available, or at least what is known about this. The lack of information just makes this more depressing and anxiety producing. Any suggestions about how to advocate for more information would be appreciated. The SFDPH information is sorely lacking. This said, I so appreciate early actions to protect us. We seem to be in better shape than so many other places—-but need to know more. Teresa Palmer M.D.
On the bright side, there is more peace in the world. That’s a fair trade off.
More peace? What little slice of the world are you referring to? It’s temporary there also.
Temporary, yes. But also baseline. Flatline. Agitation, or war, is a temporary condition also. But those conditions need a recurring input of energy. Absent that, they return to baseline.
Flatline.
Peace.
Close the parks… then shut down streets so people can exercise. Makes no sense, unless it’s really just a plan to change traffic flow permanently.
generous of you
More peace… ?do you think it is peaceful for those who are the providers for small children or elderly parents, but due to corona shut downs, have no income and no hope of any for the forseeable future? Does having hungry and scared children looking to you for food and safety, and you have no way to provide these things, does that sound peaceful?
I hope this comment comes from a good place, but it’s a very naive and privileged statement. There may be less bombs being dropped right now, but there are many tens of millions more pushed into life-threatening poverty; economic insecurity; staring into their children’s scared, hungry eyes; fear and exhaustion caring for at-risk friends and relatives; going to work (if they even have jobs) facing the drastically increased risk of contracting a potentially fatal disease every single day etc etc etc. Rather than wax lyrically about peace on Earth, I suggest getting out there and helping to feed, clothe, and care for folks less fortunate than yourself.
Yes, you are right. And we have been asking, but with limited success. We post every data point we get. The city must be feeling some pressure because Dr. Colfax announced at yesterday’s press conference that the department would be premiering a new data dashboard this week. We will link to it as soon as it appears. All the best, Lydia
Thanks for keeping the heat on them!
Amen Elizabeth. May i also add in symptoms so the ave person knows what to look for prior to wide spread testings. The lack of complete info after one shutdown is astounding.
Dramatic, alarmist like you don’t need that data. It wouldn’t change anything. Example: all the icu beds are full vs 1/2 are full. Why would you need to know that? So you can act even more insane?
Obviously we have a healthy reserve of vents given both Kaiser and the state sent some to NYC. Obviously UCSF has the situation controlled given that some of their staff volunteered to go to NYC. Think they would approve people going to NYC if the hospital was inundated with Covid cases?
Listen to the recommendations from local health officials and the Mayor (who is guided by regional health experts)
MD here
Hi, you can find hospitalization and capacity info on the website: https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/San-Francisco-COVID-19-Data-and-Reports/fjki-2fab/
https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/qtdt-yqr2
This is not logical what about positive cases aren’t positive anymore your equation will always show an increase. Why would you not use the entire population for the statistic. 24 new cases out of ~900,000 is .0001% which is not statically significant.
The data are pretty much all right here: https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/fjki-2fab
COVID-19 in San Francisco
Cumulative number of positive cases and deaths over time.
Demographics
Information on demographics and transmission category for cases and deaths associated with COVID-19.
Cases by Zip Code
Map showing confirmed positive COVID-19 cases and rate of cases by population size in San Francisco organized by zip code.
Laboratory Testing
The daily number of COVID-19 tests reported to SFDPH and the proportion of positive test results.
Hospitalizations
The number of hospitalized patients in San Francisco who either have confirmed COVID-19 or are awaiting test results.
Hospital Capacity
A snapshot of bed capacity across all San Francisco acute care hospitals.
Housing
COVID-19 Alternative Housing
Information about the City’s COVID-19 Alternative Housing Program, which provides emergency, temporary housing and shelter options for individuals who are directly affected by the coronavirus, or who are at high risk of adverse impacts if they contract the virus.