Good Morning, Mission! Welcome to Virus Village, your daily Covid-19 data dump.
Do you a sense momentous change in the air? 2020 may have been a disspiriting year, but on winter solstice, we officially entered the Age of Aquarius. It’s not grandma and gramdpa’s hippy version.
The Age of Aquarius is also called the Great Mutation. That doesn’t refer to the new virus mutation (or variant), although it could. What’s not new is the lack of testing once again leaves the country blind and slow to respond.
What is new is the sale of the San Francisco Art Institute’s main campus on Chestnut to the UC Regents, with changes as yet unforeseen.
Serving ground zero of the City’s pandemic, it’s been a year unlike any other for Mission Local. We’ve been fortunate to be blessed with outstanding editors, reporters, interns and most of all an engaged, supportive readership. Many thanks.
Scroll down for today’s Covid numbers.
Between November 28 and December 27, DPH reports 751 new cases among Mission residentsĀ for a neighborhood total of 2878 cases, or 48.2 cases per 1000 residents.Ā Though the Covid story is still a tale of two cities, with 422 new cases in Sunset/Parkside, 211 in West of Twin Peaks, 208 in the Outer Richmond, and 146 new cases in the Marina, this most recent spike shows the virus will no longer be content hanging around the Southeast.
Case numbers may be tapering down, but hospitalizations continue to surge. Ā For the week ending December 29, the weekly rate of change in Covid positive patients was back in the red with an increase 23 percent. Even though hospitals are filling up with Covid patients, DPH continues to report adequate availability. During the week ending December 29,Ā the seven-day average availability of ICU beds was 32 percent and for Acute Care beds 31 percent. On December 29, DPH reports SF hospitals had 88Ā ICU beds and 445 Acute Care beds available.Ā Though DPH offers no explanation, Phoenix Data Project provides some useful thoughts on the ICU numbers. DPH continues to report 100 percent of required PPE, but does not report on staffing, or cases and/or deaths among hospital and healthcare workers.
Apparently the new virus variant has not yet infected computers modelling the R number. Estimates continue to showĀ San Francisco’s R number below 1.1, and most models show California’s R number slightly below 1.Ā
As of December 24, the seven-day average of new cases per day was 236,Ā orĀ approximately 26.7 new cases per 100,000 residents.Ā
So far in December, the Asian population has shown the most proportional growth, going from 146 cases in October (or 12.6 percent of the City’s total), to 1251 (or 18.3 percent) so far in December. Latinx cases went from 460 in October (40 percent of the City’s total) to 2489 ( 37.5 percent of the total)Ā so far in December.
On the eve of Christmas eve, DPH was still recording a record number of tests.Ā For the month of December (until 12/28), Latinx residents received 190 tests per 1000 residents, while Asians received 173, Whites 214 and Blacks 241 tests per 1000 residents.
Despite the continued surge, DPH reports contact tracers have improved their numbers, reaching 72 percent of those testing positive, and 73 percent of named contacts. How they’ve managed to do that, and what they’ve learned about how and where the virus has spread in such large numbers, remain secret.Ā
In San Francisco, there have been 26 new deaths recorded so far in December. DPH does not provide data on new deaths
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Thanks for your wonderful reporting on the plague. It has been a very clear and accessible.
I have contributed twice and I plan to do so again.
Arrived to live in the Mission three months before the pandemic and very glad to have this great resource.
Thank you so much! Lydia