California has purchased thousands of body bags and has dozens of refrigerated storage units on standby in preparation for the rising Covid-19 death toll.
The orders for 5,000 body bags and 60 53-meter refrigerated units to be ready for counties and hospitals should be a sobering statistic, Gavin Newsom said.
While vaccines are starting to arrive, the crisis is far from over, Newsom said.
“There is light at the end of the tunnel, but we are still in the tunnel,” he said at a news conference on Tuesday. “And that means we are going through perhaps the most intense and urgent moment since the start of this pandemic.”
Newsom, a Democrat, said there is cause for optimism: Vaccines were administered as of Monday and the state expects to have 2.1 million doses by the end of December.
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He urged people across the state to wear masks, keep their distance from others, and take other measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
“I want to remind people, it’s not the flu. This isn’t something to play with,” Newsom said. “This is a deadly disease, a deadly pandemic, and we are in the thick of it right now.”
Large parts of the state are under house arrest.
About 32,300 new Covid-19 cases are reported in the state every day, a number that was historic according to Newsom, and the positivity rate had increased from 6.9 percent at the start of the month to more than 10 percent on Monday.
The number of people hospitalized for Covid-19 in California has increased from about 8,500 on Dec. 1 to about 14,200 on Monday, he said.
And the capacity of the state’s intensive care unit averages about 5.7 percent statewide, Newsom said. The lowest capacities are in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley.
According to the state health agency, more than 21,000 deaths have been caused in California from Covid-19.
The average number of deaths from the disease in the state was 163 per day as of Monday, Newsom said, using a seven-day average. On November 14, the mean daily count was 41.
A national ensemble predicted to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention predicts the death toll from Covid-19 could exceed 362,000 on Jan. 2.
On Tuesday evening, more than 16.7 million cases had been reported in the United States, and more than 304,000 people were killed, according to a number of reports from NBC News.
