Covid Tracker: 28,767 cases, 262 deaths

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Good Morning, Mission! Welcome to Virus Village, your daily Covid-19 data dump.

New average daily case numbers, positivity rates and hospitalizations suggest that while the virus is still going strong in SF, the lastest surge may be tapering off. Deaths, however, are not.

With the Vaccination somewhere on the horizon, don’t be in a rush to throw away your mask. Some already say, vaccination or no vaccination, masks will necessary in the foreseeable future. But all masks are not created equal. If masks are mandated, those that have actually proven to be effective should be produced and made available nationwide.

While you wait for the Vaccination, don’t miss the latest heart-stopping installment of Burger Wars.

Scroll down for today’s Covid numbers.

The surge may be tapering off, but the spread continues. Estimates for San Francisco’s R number range, as they have recently, from .94 to 1.14 for an average of 1.06. Estimates for California’s R number range from .84 to 1.08 for an average of .97. 

Numbers for the most recent thirty-day period fell a bit. Between December 16 and January 14, DPH reports 816 new cases in the Mission or 136.8 new cases per 10,000 residents. The new case count also dropped somewhat in Bayview Hunters Point, with 847 new cases, or 226.5 new cases per 10,000 residents. The Citywide average over that period, was 93.8 new cases per 10,000 residents.

For the week ending January 10, the seven-day average of new cases dropped to 354, or 40.7 daily new cases per 100,000 residents. 

Between January 1 and January 15, 1576 Latinx, 1026 Whites, 889 Asians, 231 Blacks, and 117 Multi-racial SF residents tested positive for the virus.  

We may be catching a break, or a breather, with hospitalizations. For the week ending January 16, the weekly change in Covid positive patients dropped  1 percent.  The pause comes at a good time as local capacity has been tightening. During that week,  the seven-day average availability of ICU beds was 24 percent and for Acute Care beds 23 percent. On January 16, DPH reports  71 ICU beds and 421 Acute Care beds available.  DPH does not report if available beds are staffed, but continues to assert 100 percent of required PPE on hand. 

Again, the seven-day average number of Citywide tests collected daily rose, and the seven-day average daily Citywide positivity rate fell. From January 1 through January 15, 35,963 tests were collected from Mission residents with 1,764 or 4.91 percent positive.

The statewide positivity rate continues to fall. Slowly.

Despite a record surge of cases, DPH reports that for the two weeks ending January 8, contact tracers interviewed 79 percent of the positive cases, and reached 74 percent of their contacts. In contrast, Phoenix Data Project shows that contact tracers appear to have been overwhelmed for weeks (scoll down to “Transmission Category”).

Expect 262 to be low; that number was reached on January 9. Most recent figures show the age group from 60-79 with 13 percent of the new cases, have slightly increased their proportion of the death toll to 27 percent. Those over 80, with 4 percent of the new cases, still comprise 61 percent of the deaths.