Covid Tracker: 25,973 cases, 233 deaths

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

A good news/bad news day today beginning with another eye-popping death number discussed below.

The good news, which is very good news, is that UCSF and the Latino Task Force will begin testing at 24th Street BART station tomorrow, using the BinaxNow rapid tests. In the short run we may see more Citywide cases and higher positivity rates, but not only will this give us a more accurate picture of what’s happening in San Francisco, it may also be a significant step in containing the virus as we wait for the Vaccine.

Another piece of good news; after months of stiffing suggestions and ignoring questions, DPH is requesting feedback on improving its Covid Tracker. Wow.

Despite the mess on Capitol Hill, Biden decided to prioritize first doses rather than hold back supply for second doses. Will it work? Along with known supply and distribution problems, a new question has come up: who’s going to administer the shots?

Meanwhile Shamann Walton has been elected President of the Board of Supervisors (good luck!).

And Neighborhood Notes — is the northwest corner of 18th and Guerrero cursed?

Scroll down for today’s Covid numbers.

Between December 7 and January 5, DPH reports new Mission cases slowed down a bit, rising to 837 new cases for a total of 3200, or 53.7 cases per 1000 residents.

As you know by now, there has been about a week or more delay in reporting deaths. For example, yesterday’s 218 figure was actually reached on Christmas Day.  Likewise, today’s figure, 233 comes from January 3 and will be revised upward. The slope of deaths in December looks much steeper now, representing a 32 percent increase from December 11 through January 3. As can be expected, the increase has come from those older than 70, who make up 77 percent of all deaths. Of the 233 deaths, 174 had one or more underlying condition and 5 had none. The rest, 23 percent, are unknown.

Hospitalizations keep rising though not going through the roof. Today’s numbers include 3 ICU transfers and 1 in Acute Care.   For the week ending January 7, the weekly change in Covid positive patients rose  10 percent. During that week,  the seven-day average availability of ICU beds dipped to 30 percent and for Acute Care beds 27 percent. On January 7, DPH reports  80 ICU beds and 325 Acute Care beds available.  DPH does not report if available beds are staffed, but continues to assert 100 percent of required PPE on hand.

 

Covid-19 R Estimation raised its estimate of San Francisco’s R number to 1.2, higher than 6 other models that average 1.06. Estimates for California range from .9 to 1.13.

For the week ending January 1, the seven-day average of new cases reflected a relatively low R number, rising modestly to 273, or 31.3 daily new cases per 100,000 residents. Will this number rise as the New Years numbers come in?

About 55 percent of tests are collected by City-funded initiatives and testing sites. The remaining 45 percent are collected by private providers (such as Kaiser, One Medical, UCSF, Sutter, etc.). For the month of December, the Latinx positivity rate was 12.4 percent, Blacks 4.2, Native American, 4.1, Multi-racial 3.7, Asian 3.4,and Whites 2.5 percent.

In December,22 percent of the new cases were aged 30 through 39. Based on their population, the case rate for that age group was 99.2. The Citywide case rate in December was 94.9.