Good morning Mission. And welcome to Virus Village, your daily data dump.
As I’m preparing this Tracker, UCSF docs are giving a briefing on the current state of the virus in SF and California as well as the treatments they are working on. Mission Local will have report later today.
As testing hopefully speeds up, and the weather changes, there will be more of a demand for contact tracing. Is the City’s contact tracing program prepared? I don’t know. An annoyed reader wrote asking for more pressure on DPH to provide timely and useful data on the program. So far, all we get are percentages of cases and contacts reached over a two-week period. For most of the past two months, the numbers have been static. Today DPH reports a mild improvement over recent days (79 percent of cases and 77 percent of contacts reached for the two week period ending August 14 – still far below the goal of 90 percent on each). Mission Local will have a more in-depth look at the state of contact tracing soon. Meanwhile, if you are concerned about the information you are receiving, contact DPH at DataRequest@sfdph.org.
And now, onto the numbers we do have.
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.
Reporting on cases in the Mission has become a bit weird over the past few days. This could be due to the state’s data problems we reported on earlier. Despite increased testing, only 7 new cases were added over the past couple of days. Today, DPH reports 9 fewer cases for a total of 1161 as of August 18. There has also been a reduction in the number of cases per 10,000 residents.
California health officials report the virus is stabilizing around the state and some of the figures from San Francisco support that report. However, if true, transmission is stabilizing at a very high plateau. The average number of daily cases as of a week ago (considered “more reliable) was 98. This works out to 11.3 per 100,000 residents, a number which has been increasing as of late and is solidly in the DPH red zone.
The Latinx population makes up the majority of cases in SF and California. The UCSF briefing the morning addressed this problem pointing to, without irony, that those who are considered “essential” are low wage workers, who work under unsafe conditions and live in overcrowded housing. It should be obvious that the virus will not be brought under control until essential workers are tested, paid and protected.
Average positivity rates have been stable.
More Acute Care patients account for another rise in hospitalizations, bringing the number of Covid patients back to where it was in July. Reporting no change in the rate of weekly change in hospitalizations, DPH says the City continues to meet its goals. As of August 17, only 79 ICU beds, and 351 Acute Care beds were available. Looking the seven-day rolling average percentage of ICU and Acute Care beds available, DPH again reports the City is meeting its targets.
The model we primarily rely on for an R number, is reporting SF below 1 (.99) for the first time in two months. This is in line with other models and supports the notion that the virus is stabilizing. As does an ensemble of ten models putting California at .98
Cummulative deaths across a line graph is not as informative as daily reported deaths. Please add that to this article as well if possible. Overlay that on the ICU chart for best understanding. Thanks!