Good Morning, Mission! Welcome to Virus Village, your daily Covid-19 data dump.
This is, potentially, a Big Deal! For months the City has talked about taking on the virus at its most destructive heart. Now we see some signs of real action.
Which does seem out of character for a City “family” with a history of less than honorable, or intelligent, priorities.
Yesterday, Mayor Breed and Director Colfax took the high road; recognizing the value our individual and collective sacrifices, before pleading with us not to let go. For those who can’t practice abstinence, focus on harm reduction.
Shutdowns affect some families more than others, but even with tough restrictions, there’s still plenty going on during this most bizarre holiday season.
Scroll down for today’s Covid numbers.
Between November 20 and December 19,Ā 672 new cases were added to the Mission for aĀ total of 2698 cases, or 45.2 cases per 1000 residents.Ā Ā
ICU patients rose slightly as all Covid hospitalizations slightly fell. DPH reports that on December 21,Ā SF hospitalsĀ had 75 ICU beds and 370 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 15 percent, much lower than it has been rising recently.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
One thing I never expected to learn about this year was epidemiological computer modeling.Ā I don’t know where Dr. Colfax gets his projections, but the State makes a modeling site publicly available for you to get your own.Ā Ā
As noted by Dr. Colfax, R number estimates have begun to slowly fall in the City and around the state.Ā Covid-19 R Estimation for California estimates the City’s R number at 1.28, while the ensemble‘s estimates for SF range from 1.1Ā to 1.44, with an average of 1.23. Though Covid-19 R Estimation for California still shows the state with the highest transmission rate in the country, it estmates the R number has fallen substantially to 1.39. The ensemble estimates 1.09, taking into account UCLA’s extremely low estimate of .9.
Even though the rate of increase has slowed, as of December 15, the seven-day averageĀ of new cases per day rose to 283 cases or 32.5 new cases per 100,000 residents. That’s aĀ big number to bring down.
Congrats to contact tracers, who, despite a flood of positive test results, have reportedly maintained, even slightly improved, their performance. For the two weeks ending December 18, tracers interviewed 69 percent of those newly tested positive, and 71 percent of their contacts. Unfortunately no explanation for this feat, nor actionable data (like where cases have been contracted), is provided.
San Francisco received kudos in the recent past for its “robust” testing and positivity numbers. But as Mission Local reported for months, the City had been allocating almost 70 percent of its testing resources to the Embarcadeo test site.Ā Ā Though the “worried wealthy” were reassured, and Citywide positivity rates kept low, relatively few tests were provided for the City’s most vulnerable populations and neighborhoods.Ā Ā
Of 4717 new cases in December, 2371 were men and 2322 were women. There were 4 trans females, 0 trans males who tested positive, and the rest were either “other” or “unknown.”Ā
Of 176 deaths, 113 were men, 61 were women, and 2 were “unknown.”