COVID wave washes over California. Some officials urge residents to mask up
A COVID wave is washing over California, with the state seeing continued increases in the number of newly confirmed cases and hospitalizatio ns as some officials urged the public to take greater precautions.
The extent of the recent increases has prompted some county-level health officials to recommend that residents once again consider wearing masks in indoor public settings, at least until transmission has declined.
California currently has "high" coronavirus levels in sewage, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And increases are being seen across the Golden State, from Los Angeles County to the San Francisco Bay Area to areas around the state capital.
The CDC estimates that coronavirus infections are either "growing" or "likely growing" in 30 states, including California. Twenty-one states have either “very high” or "high" viral levels in wastewater. Of all regions of the U.S., the West has the highest levels of coronavirus in wastewater, followed by the South.
"California is experiencing a summer COVID wave," said Dr. Aimee Sisson, the health officer in Yolo County, just west of Sacramento.
The rate at which coronavirus lab tests are coming back positive also continues to climb. For the week that ended Aug. 23, 12.07% of tests across the state came back positive, up from a rate of 6.03% for the week that ended July 26.
Similar leaps in rates were seen in L.A. County, where the positive test rate was 13.44%, up from 8.11% four weeks earlier; in Orange County, it was 18.1%, up from 9.4%; and in San Francisco, it was 8.7%, up from 7.1%.
Dr. Elizabeth Hudson, the regional chief of infectious diseases at Kaiser Permanente Southern California, said she received many calls related to outpatient cases of COVID-19 while on call over the Labor Day weekend.
"We are definitely seeing an upswing in patients with COVID," Hudson said. "Thankfully, inpatient cases are few and far between. Wastewater levels, however, are still rising in Los Angeles, so we have not reached the top of this current wave."
