Good Morning, Mission! Welcome to Virus Village, your daily Covid-19 data dump.
Facing a shortage of beds, California begins opening field hospitals. A shortage of workers to staff those beds will not be as simple a fix.
Predictably, vaccine distribution has been chaotic. Since the rich will pay to get in line first, why not use their billions to serve the public?
Rent relief in San Francisco isn’t so much chaotic as wholly inadequate.
Scroll down for today’s Covid numbers.
Between November 17 and December 16, the Mission addedĀ 672 new cases for a grand total of 2682 cases, or 44.6 cases per 1000 residents.Ā Over the past two months, DPH reports 32,670 tests in the Mission with a 3.54 positivity rate. Mission Local will be taking a closer look at these numbers in the coming days.
As San Francisco hospital beds continue to fill up, DPH reports that on December 20,Ā SF hospitalsĀ had 90 ICU beds and 412 Acute Care beds available.Ā DPH does not provide information on staffing. For the week ending December 20, the weekly rate of change in Covid positive patients roseĀ 20 percent, the lowest rise in a month.Ā During that week, the seven-day average availability of ICU beds was 29 percent and for Acute Care beds 22 percent. Ā DPH continues to report 100 percent of required PPE on hand.Ā Ā
For a more alarming view on the status of local and state hospitals, check out this article from the New York Times based on data released by Dark Ages Donald’s Department of (poor) Health.Ā SFGH reportedly has only 2 ICU beds available.
R number estimates have begun to slowly fall around the state. Not so much in SF, where Covid-19 R Estimation for California continues to estimate the number near 1.4.Ā The ensemble‘s estimates for SF range from 1.11 to 1.44, with an average of 1.25.
For the week ending December 14, the seven-day average number of Citywide daily cases rose to 275 cases or 31.6 new cases per 100,000 residents. From November 27 through December 4, the average daily new case number increased almost 85 percent, while between December 7 and 14, average daily new cases rose 13.6 percent. Hopeful, but not very, if we don’t hold down the expected Christmas-New Years surge.
So far in December, the Latinx test positivity rate is over 11 percent, while the positivity rate among Blacks is 4 percent, Asians 3.9 percent and Whites 2.4 percent.
As of December 19, the Latinx population had approximately 35 percent of the month’s new cases, Whites 20 percent, Asians 18 percent and Blacks 5 percent. Data has not reported on 19 percent of the cases in December, in contrast to 13 percent in November.
Of the 176 deaths, DPH attributes 8 to SRO residents and 36 to residents of nursing homes (“Skilled Nursing Facilities”).
Mark, thanks as always for your dogged reporting. Have you addressed why the % of deaths is disproportionately higher in Asian community. Hospitalized late in disease? More essential workers without insurance? Crowded housing in Chinatown? Are most deaths in Chinatown v. Sunset or Excelsior. Undocumented. Thanks.
I would think the reason for latinx and asian is that there is a tendency to have multiple people in 1 household, not particularly large households either. its spreads eaisier in this environment. just a guess though.