Covid Tracker: 35,425 cases, 493 deaths

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

Good news Giants fans! Word out of Mission Creek is that the team has decided to require either vaccination or a negative test for all workers at the ballpark. Reportedly the Giants will even provide free rapid testing.

As the variant spread provokes new case uprisings in certain states, UCSF Grand Rounds discusses the current challenges as well as safe activities for those vaccinated.

UCSF’s Dr. Monica Gandhi believes the vaccines are going to depress hospitalization numbers to a manageable state. In this thread she follows up with hospitalization figures from around the country.

Although the Anti-Recall campaign has decided June 15 would be a great date to get back to “business as usual” (Oh no!! Not that!) some experts would prefer to see the data first.

Part of the problem will be that not everyone wants to get vaccinated which could pose a problem for reopening and reaching the ever elusive “herd immunity”.

But for those who do want the vaccine, more local access is being provided.

Is anyone working on a vaccine to protect the City from the SFPD? From the bad joke desk comes this report that the San Francisco Police Department’s “Principled Policing Bureau” allegedly became a “reign of terror” under former San Francisco Police Department Deputy Chief Michael Connolly.

Say goodbye to Myriad and hello to Flowers.

While waiting for The Vaccination, scroll down for today’s Covid numbers.

Note there are some discrepancies from the CDC data used for the chart and the data supplied from SFDPH. As of April 7, DPH reports over 53 percent (409,273) of San Francisco residents over 16 had received one dose, and over  33 percent (254,500) had received two.  On April 7, the seven-day rolling average of shots per day was 13,189. The DPH goal is 10,000 shots a day. For information on where to get vaccinated in and around the Mission, visit our Vaccination Page.

Small upticks in the R Number world today.  Covid-19 R Estimation  raised its estimate for  San Francisco R  Number to 1.05, while keeping its  California estimate at .95. The ensemble has raised its average estimate for San Francisco to  .83 and  the estiimate for California to .84. 

Between March 8 and April 10, DPH attributed 82 new positive tests to the Mission, or 13.8 new  cases per 10,000 residents. As the City has reopened, new cases are popping up in different neighborhoods. Although the Mission had the highest number during that time frame, North Beach had the highest new case rate with 20.6 new cases per 10,000 residents,followed closely by the FiDi/South Beach. Thirteen neighborhood had so few cases, their rates were negligible.

For the first time in the pandemic, averge weekly new case numbers have been essentially flat for a prolonged period (almost a month). For the week ending April 1, the seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in the City remained at 37 or 4.2 new cases per day per 100,000 residents.

As noted over and over again earlier, case numbers in San Francisco would not come down meaningfully until the situation among the hardest hit Latinx community was addressed. We can see some data recently to augment that argument. In March there were 2324 fewer Latinx cases than in Janurary, 1378 fewer Asian cases, 1357 fewer White cases, 365 fewer Black cases, 167 fewer Pacific Islander cases,  68 fewer Multi-racial cases and 14 fewer Native American cases in March than January .

No new hospitalization figures to report.  For the week ending April 6, the rate of weekly change in Covid positive patients fell 4 percent.   During that week,  the seven-day average availability of ICU beds was 35 percent and Acute Care availability was 25 percent. On April 6, 96 ICU beds and 384 Acute Care beds were available.  In case of a surge, 298 ICU beds and 247 Acute Care beds are available, but DPH doesn’t say how many of those beds are staffed. 

The health pandemic in the U.S. is not limited to the virus. A new study from the Naional Institutes of Health reports nearly two-thirds of COVID-19 hospitalizations in the U.S. could be attributed to obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and heart failure.

Reflecting the stability of average weekly new case numbers, the Citywide average positivity rate has been below 1 percent since March 3.

An emphasis on equity appears to be showing up in vaccinations so far. Of the seven neighborhoods with more than 50 percent of their populations receiving at least one shot, three are in the Southeast sector (Portola, Excelsior and Bayview Hunters Point) and two are home to ethnic minorities  (Japantown and Chinatown) . With 46 percent of the population having received at least on shot, the Mission reflects the Citywide average of 45 percent.

The last Covid-related death  in San Francico was recorded on March 27.  So far during the month of March there have been 17 recorded Covid-related deaths.