Good morning Mission. And welcome to Virus Village, your daily data dump on Covid-19.
Yesterday UCSF doctors called on the City to focus more testing and contact tracing in the Mission and neighborhoods in the south and southeast of the City. Though statewide reopening relies on county-wide data, this often ignores what we can’t help but see in San Francisco: deep, pervasive inequities that make one part of the City much more at risk than others. As Jon Jacobo of the Latino Task Force told Mission Local, focusing on where the disease is most prevalent will reduce the transmission rate for the entire city.
Now onto today’s numbers.
HiGeorge, a data visualization startup, developed some new visualizations for Mission Local, which we will be using and fine-tuning in the days to come.
Yesterday, 6 new cases were added to the Mission, raising the total now to 1167. The disparities in positive cases between the southeastern and western neighborhoods referenced above is clearly reflected in this DPH map.
The average daily case number for August 13, the last date considered “more reliable”, is 99. Although case numbers and dates fluctuate due to delays in testing analysis and reports, it has hovered around 100 since July 27.
More cases mean more hospitalizations. Not since July 27 have the City’s hospitals reported 128 Covid confirmed and suspected patients, the figure given for August 18. The number of available beds has dropped to 75 in ICU beds, and 304 in Acute Care beds. The City’s seven-day rolling average percentages of ICU and Acute Care beds available, continues to meet the target set by DPH.
R number modeling continues to show SF and California holding steady around 1, or falling ever so slightly.
Though the death count has grown since June, the Case Fatality Rate has dropped to .8 percent. The Atlantic has an article out today on “long haulers” reminding us that death is not the only serious effect resulting from Covid-19.
Thank you for the depth of this reporting. Cases and deaths are important indicators but I find stats on ICU and acute care bed usage/availability to be valuable.