Santa Clara County Reports 856 New Coronavirus Cases, 8 Deaths

SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CA — The Santa Clara County Public Health Department reported 856 additional coronavirus cases Friday.

The latest report brings the countywide case count to 37,517.

The county reported four additional coronavirus-related fatalities Friday, bringing its COVID-19 death toll to 503.

There were 311 COVID-19 patients hospitalized in Santa Clara County as of Friday, of which 79 were being treated in intensive care units.

Elsewhere in the Bay Area and beyond, health officers in five Bay Area counties announced Friday that they will implement a new stay-at-home order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, requiring most nonessential businesses to close all indoor and outdoor operations.

Under the order, businesses like restaurants, wineries, hair and nail salons, cardrooms and fitness centers will be required to temporarily stop all indoor and outdoor activities while retail stores must limit indoor capacity at 20 percent.

Schools that have already reopened in-person classes will be allowed to continue and such decisions will be left to officials in each county.

The order - affecting Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Francisco and Marin counties and the city of Berkeley - pre-empts the state's stay-at-home order, which Gov. Gavin Newsom formally announced Thursday.

Contra Costa County Health Officer Dr. Chris Farnitano said the Bay Area's recent coronavirus surge has resulted in numbers of new cases and hospitalizations higher than the region's summer surge.

"The dark COVID winter that we feared would come has arrived in the Bay Area," Farnitano said Friday during a virtual news conference with health officials from all six jurisdictions to announce the stay-at-home order.

"I, and other county health officers in the Bay Area, don't think we can wait for the state's new restrictions to go into effect later this month," he said.

The state's order does not take effect until a region has less than 15 percent of its intensive care unit beds available.

Newsom said Thursday the Bay Area as a whole was unlikely to meet that threshold until mid-December.

"We want to mitigate mixing. Period, full stop," Newsom said Thursday of the state order. "We want to diminish the amount of mixing ... and we need to create less opportunities for the kind of contact and extended period and extended time of contact that occurs in many of these establishments, that's why we are moving forward."

The five Bay Area counties and the city of Berkeley chose to implement the order now as new cases and hospitalizations skyrocket around the state.

Los Angeles County has already done so as well.

Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody said Santa Clara County already has less than 15 percent of its intensive care unit beds available, and all six health officers agreed it was a matter of when, not if, the same happened across the region.

"We hope that by acting early and by acting as a region, we will have the best chance of bending the curve faster, and of getting out of this difficult situation sooner and saving more lives," Cody said.

The six health officers acknowledged that the order was likely to compound the economic hardship already experienced by many businesses across the Bay Area that have had to shut down at some point during the pandemic or have had to operate at reduced capacities.

"This is a hard way to close what's been a really hard year," Marin County Health Officer Dr. Matthew Willis said. "We're just beginning to receive the first doses of vaccine, so there's light on the horizon.

"Unfortunately, we're seeing surges in cases and we need to hold the line, at least through the end of the year," he added.

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There have been 1,301,921 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 19,658 coronavirus-related deaths in California as of Friday night according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The United States had 13,343,430 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 278,605 coronavirus-related fatalities as of Friday night.

There have been 65,771,488 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 1,516,035 deaths reported globally as of Friday night.

— Bay City News contributed to this report