Santa Clara Reports 1,700 Coronavirus Cases; 10% ICU Capacity

SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CA — The Santa Clara County Public Health Department reported an alarming 1,700 new coronavirus cases on the same day that three hospitals ran out of capacity in intensive care units.

There were only 31 beds remaining in the county — less than 10 percent of the total capacity within intensive care units. Three hospitals, O'Connor Hospital in San Jose, St. Louise Regional Hospital in Gilroy and Regional Medical Center in San Jose, completely ran out of beds Wednesday.

"This is absolutely the worst we have seen by an order of magnitude. We are in a much worse state right now than we were in the summer or the spring," Dr. Ahmad Kamal, Santa Clara County Director of Healthcare Preparedness, told NBC Bay Area.

There were 403 recorded patients hospitalized in the county Wednesday and 76 new patients admitted as of Wednesday afternoon. In total, 515 have died within the county, with three additional fatalities recorded Wednesday.

The 1,700 of new cases is startling, and officials said that the high volume newly reported cases has caused delays, which could mean that Wednesday's total was underreported.

Bay Area counties moved to reopen playgrounds after California officials reversed course Wednesday on shutting them down in regions under a stay-at-home order.

The state's order, announced last Thursday, drew swift backlash from parents, experts and officials who said there is little evidence that COVID-19 is spread at outdoor playgrounds and that playgrounds are important for children's health.

The state's reversal was widely celebrated by parents and legislators on social media Wednesday. The move is being adopted by Bay Area counties that enacted the restrictions in the state's order in recent days even though counties had not yet dropped below a level of open intensive care unit beds that would have triggered the order to take effect in the region.

Elsewhere Elsewhere around the Bay Area and beyond, California's average number of new coronavirus cases per day has more than doubled over the last two weeks, one of the state's top health officials said Tuesday.

The state recorded 23,272 cases Tuesday and has averaged 23,503new cases per day over the last seven days, according to state Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly.

The state was recording around 11,000 new cases per day on average two weeks ago, Ghaly said, a reflection of the surge of new cases that has engulfed much of the state.

Solano County is likely to find itself under the statewide stay-at-home order in the next two weeks due to rising coronavirus cases and hospitalizations throughout the Bay Area, the county's health officer said Tuesday.

The county is receiving reports of around 130 cases per day, significantly more than the roughly 25 to 30 cases the county was observing per day in late summer and early fall, according to county Public Health Officer Dr. Bela Matyas.

The county's test positivity rate has also spiked in recent weeks, reaching 12.8 percent over the last seven days, Matyas told the county's Board of Supervisors Tuesday.

Up to 24,000 healthcare workers in San Mateo County will be first to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, with the first shipment to the county expected to arrive next week, health officials said.

Chief of Health Louise Rogers and Dr. Anand Chabra - one of the county's medical directors who oversees the vaccination program - discussed the vaccine's timeline during the county Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday.

"We know that we're getting six boxes of the Pfizer vaccine probably next week, so that's just under 6,000 doses. It's a pretty small shipment," Chabra said. "Towards the end of December, we'll receive somewhere on the order of six to seven times as much of both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine, assuming both get approved by the FDA."

On Wednesday, California reported 1,446,885 cases and 20,396 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The United States had 15,379,674 cases of coronavirus as of Wednesday and 20,396 deaths.

There have been 15,379,574 cases globally and 1,567,706 deaths.

Bay City News and Patch Editors Kat Schuster and Gideon Rubin contributed to this report.

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