California added just over 12,000 new Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, the lowest daily number of cases in a state suffering from a dramatic rise in the holidays since Thanksgiving, according to data from the state health department.
“We haven’t seen so many of them in a while,” Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly said at a press conference. Just two weeks ago, the state reported an average daily count of about 40,000 new cases.
But as state health officials see signs of optimism after the pandemic’s darkest months to date, they renew calls to avoid rallies leading up to the Super Bowl and Lunar New Year, warning that this could lead to another deadly wave of the virus that claimed the lives of more than 41,000 Californians.
Looking forward: Hospital admissions are expected to decline by more than half over the next month, Ghaly said. In the past two weeks, the number of hospital admissions has decreased by 29%, with more than 14,000 patients treated. About 3,800 of those people are in intensive care.
Those projections have led to regional stay-at-home orders being dropped statewide. The capacity projections in the IC were a driving force behind those limitations, and now the entire state is expected to move well above the state-set threshold of 15%. In grim new forecasts, Southern California, which is the most affected region in the state, is expected to have the most ICU capacity in the state next month.
But so far, more than 1,000 cases of Covid-19 variants have been discovered in California – two different versions of the West Coast variants along with the UK variant.
“Variants are creating a wildcard again,” Ghaly said, adding that the new types are genuine concern that are being watched closely as the state continues to actively sequence mutations and build capacity to do more.
“If you give Covid an inch, it will take a mile,” he warned.