CA Reports 33K+ New Coronavirus Cases As Delta Drives Surge

CALIFORNIA — About half of California's population was back under an indoor mask mandate on Monday as coronavirus cases continued to spike and public health officials around the state sounded the alarm once again.

The state reported 33,406 new coronavirus cases between Friday and Sunday. By comparison, the state only reported 787 cases in one day on June 23, when the positivity rate was 1.1 percent. On Monday, the positivity rate rose to 6.7 percent.

The staggering numbers revealed a sharp uptick in cases driven by the delta variant, a mutation that federal officials have said is as contagious as chickenpox and is up to 60 percent more contagious.

Cases have been rising for weeks, but the latest figures indicate that the Golden State is officially in the midst of yet another summer surge. Health officials on Friday said the delta variant made up 84 percent of cases sequenced in July — a 31.3 percent increase since June.

On Monday, seven Bay Area counties and the city of Berkeley reinstated indoor mask mandates. Last month, Los Angeles and Sacramento counties also brought that mandate back.

And while public health officials statewide are recommending masks again, they are also pleading with the vaccine-hesitant to reconsider.

"We must act now to protect ourselves, our loved ones and our community. If you are eligible to get a COVID-19 vaccine and have not yet done so, please do not wait any longer," said Dr. Chris Farnitano, Contra Costa County's health officer on Monday.

A leaked report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week caused confusion after it revealed that the highly transmissible delta variant was more likely to infect vaccinated people than previous mutations. But officials urge that the vaccines are still doing what they were meant to do: prevent serious illness, hospitalizations and death.

Federal officials said last week that the available vaccines provide a 25-fold reduction in the risk of hospitalization or death from COVID-19 compared to those who are unvaccinated.

California officials said Monday that a vast amount of new cases were tied to those who are unvaccinated with 600 percent higher case rates compared to those who had been inoculated.

On the week of July 14-20, the average case rate among unvaccinated Californians was 20.7 per 100,000 per day. Among vaccinated residents, the rate was much lower at 3.5 per 100,000 per day.

Hospitalizations are on the rise again too. On Monday, 4,772 Californians were hospitalized for the virus, a 4.6 percent increase from Friday. In Los Angeles County, there were 1,096 people with COVID-19 hospitalized Monday, a nearly four-fold increase in just one month. Nationwide, hospitalizations spiked by 46 percent in the last seven days, according to the CDC.

In Contra Costa County, hospitalizations shot up 400 percent throughout July, Dr. Chris Farnitano, the county's health officer said Monday. Four out of five patients admitted for coronavirus were unvaccinated, while one out of five patients were vaccinated.

More than 61 percent of Californians are fully vaccinated, leaving a substantial amount of Californians who are unvaccinated or vaccine-hesitant.

But vaccinations are on the rise again as California reported an increase of 20 percent in the total number of first vaccine doses administered to more than 265,000 people the week of July 19 compared to the week of July 12.

In Los Angeles County, where cases remained higher than anywhere else in the state, vaccinations have also risen. Between July 19 and 25, about 70,000 doses were administered in the county, up about 7,500 from the previous week.

"Over the past eight months, millions of people in the U.S., and around the world, have been safely vaccinated. The data overwhelmingly shows the vaccines to be effective at preventing serious illness that causes hospitalization, and death," county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said on Saturday. "To really beat back transmission, however, we need to have higher levels of vaccination, particularly among our younger residents."

Gov. Gavin Newsom last week expanded vaccine mandates to state and health care workers. Other employers such as Facebook, Disneyland, Netflix and Lyft also moved to mandate vaccinations for employees with few exemptions.

"We are now dealing with a pandemic of the unvaccinated" Newsom said in a statement. "It’s going to take renewed efforts to protect Californians from the dangerous Delta variant."