The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advise that people travel as little as possible at this time. If you must travel, it’s best to check the infection rates in the state you are traveling to and what the restrictions are for each state.
US biotech Moderna said its Covid-19 vaccine had shown 94.5 per cent efficacy in clinical trials, in the second positive set of results for a potential coronavirus shot in the past eight days. Last week, US giant Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech also said their vaccine, which uses the same messenger RNA technology, was found to be more than 90 per cent effective. The Moderna finding, hot on the heels of that breakthrough, will further boost optimism that the world can turn the corner in the management of the pandemic.
Pasadena:
From the Pasadena Star-News: The coronavirus situation in Pasadena hasn’t been this bad since late July. The city reported five times more cases on average this past week, compared to the all-time low it noted five weeks ago.
Between Saturday, Nov. 7 and Friday, Nov. 13, the city counted an average of 19.6 cases every day. That’s almost twice as many cases reported last week when it noted a little over 10 cases a day on average. Both weeks are a far cry from the city’s all-time low of 3.4 cases tallied each day between Oct. 10 and Oct. 16.
Why’s it getting so bad? Well, it’s a combination of things.
“The reason is the same in Pasadena as it is in Los Angeles County, as it is in the state,” Public Health Director Dr. Ying-Ying Goh said in an interview on Friday. “And it’s because we’re seeing more people get together from different households.”
Between back-to-back championships from the Dodgers and Lakers, to Halloween parties, to everyday gatherings, Goh knows people are probably tired of the pandemic, “even though the virus is still here and worse than ever.”
On top of that, Goh said, some folks who have tested positive aren’t listening to health officials’ pleas for them to quarantine and isolate.
“Even after they get positive test results, they don’t maintain isolation because, for whatever reason, they think they don’t have to,” she said.
Then there’s another group who come into contact with someone who’s confirmed positive and they immediately get tested, getting a negative result, “and they think they won’t get COVID because they got a test, but they do,” Goh said. “You have to wait 14 days” after contact for a test to be accurate.
“It’s been a long pandemic so far, it’s been many months, and people are starting to look forward to the holidays, thinking it will be safe for them to celebrate in traditional ways, when in fact this is the worst time because the numbers in the country are really worse, by far, than they’ve ever been.”
Since this newsgroup last reported on the city’s coronavirus situation on Wednesday, Nov. 4, the city has counted 176 new cases but no deaths. Of those, 137 cases were reported this week between Nov. 7 and Nov. 14.
Goh warned that deaths tend to lag behind cases and she believes they will eventually pick up in Pasadena if the case rate continues to increase.
A total of 3,054 people have been infected in Pasadena since the pandemic began, though many have since recovered, while 129 deaths have occurred. The last was reported on Oct. 9.
Young people appear to be the driving force behind new infections, a trend that’s held since the summer. Out of 176 new cases, 114 involved those under the age of 40.
Latinx/Latino residents are still among the hardest hit in Pasadena, with 97 out of 176 new cases. White residents had 37 new cases, Black or African Americans had nine cases, as did Asian or Pacific Islanders. Five patients were of another race while health officials are investigating another 19 cases.
Meanwhile, hospitalizations have risen slightly at the Huntington Hospital, now counting 24 patients in its dedicated coronavirus unit, up from 20 patients on Wednesday of last week.
LA County:
A fresh surge of coronavirus cases on Saturday and Sunday has alarmed Los Angeles County officials, who say they may consider imposing a curfew and other health measures in effort to stem the spread of COVID-19.
New cases topped 3,000 for two consecutive days over the weekend. County public health officials recorded 3,780 new cases of the virus Saturday, the highest one-day total since the peak of the crisis in mid-July. On Sunday, officials reported 3,061 new cases and three deaths.
Amid the increase, the county Department of Public Health is expected to propose a set of recommendations for the Board of Supervisors this week.
L.A. County remains in the strictest purple tier of the state’s four-phase reopening plan, meaning many businesses must remain closed for indoor operations. Still, officials relaxed some rules over the last couple months, including permitting hair salons and barbershops to operate indoors with certain precautions and allowing family entertainment centers to reopen outdoors.
The increase in new cases could jeopardize those gains. A curfew is one of the few alternatives to restricting business operations even more heavily, Supervisor Sheila Kuehl said.
The seven-day average of new cases has nearly doubled in recent weeks, with the county reporting about 2,371.9 new cases each day over the last week compared with 1,241.9 cases two weeks before that, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis.
Although hospitalizations haven’t yet reached the level seen during the summer, when there were more than 2,200 confirmed coronavirus patients in county hospitals, the number has shot up from a low of 687 in late September to 1,049 patients as of Saturday, raising concerns the increase could outpace the number of available intensive care beds.
More people are getting tested — 340,636 during the week ending Nov. 8, the highest weekly total since the start of the pandemic, according to data from the county.
But a larger share of those tests are also coming back positive, which officials say indicates that transmission of the virus has increased. The positivity rate had been holding at about 4% since late August but ticked up to roughly 6% this week.
California: And although not yet experiencing a second wave, California on Thursday reached the grim milestone of one million cases, according to The New York Times’s database. Health officials also announced this week that 11 counties moved back into a more restrictive tier of the state’s reopening system. “If things stay the way we are between this week and next week over half of Californian counties will have moved into a more restrictive tier,” said Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state’s health secretary, in his briefing on Tuesday.
There are currently no travel restrictions in place for people entering California from another state. A few states require visitors from California to self-quarantine on arrival. If you’re traveling within the state, Bay Area health officials are recommending 14-day quarantines after traveling outside the county, something that Dr. Ghaly advises as well.
With the country’s fall coronavirus surge finally hitting the West Coast just ahead of the holidays, California, Oregon and Washington issued their first advisory against travel Friday while the Bay Area’s largest counties cracked down — again — on indoor restaurant dining.
In a joint statement, the three West Coast governors said residents who travel beyond their state’s borders should quarantine for two weeks upon their return, and out-of-state visitors should quarantine for the same period upon arrival — guidance that would shut down many planned Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings.
The announcement comes in a week when COVID-19 is surging nationwide, with Texas and California recording their millionth infections. In California, 11 counties including Contra Costa and Santa Cruz were forced back to more restrictive reopening tiers.
And Bay Area health officials Friday said they will once more close indoor dining at restaurants and other activities that had been allowed again — at reduced capacity — just months earlier. San Francisco has instituted a similar rollback that took effect Friday night.
Friday’s Bay Area health orders in Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties will go into effect Tuesday. Gyms must also close in Contra Costa County, but they can remain open at 10% in Santa Clara County. Bars and entertainment centers must close entirely, while wineries will be permitted to offer outdoor service only. Retail and other essential businesses must limit their capacity to 50%.
Earlier this week, officials in Marin County had “recommended” that restaurants reduce their capacity from 50% to 25%, but that swiftly evolved into a full shutdown of indoor operations.
So far Alameda County, San Mateo and Solano counties haven’t issued any new orders.
The need for new measures, officials said, is clear: Health departments around the state reported 10,520 new cases Thursday, the highest single-day total since Aug. 11. More than 18,000 Californians have died from COVID-19 to date.
The US: From Fair Warning: Thursday, the U.S. recorded more than 160,000 cases for the first time, only eight days after recording 100,000 new cases in one day for the first time, according to The New York Times. Six of the last nine days have set records for new cases. The country also set a record for hospitalizations on Thursday for the third day in a row, with 67,096 receiving treatment.
California has joined Texas in recording its one millionth case. Deaths are still below the daily peak earlier this year, but the country has averaged more than 1,000 a day in mid-November.
Karin Brulliard reports for The Washington Post that small social gatherings at homes are fueling the rise in cases, the result of pandemic fatigue and widening social bubbles. Intimate gatherings at home, whether over a meal or a card game, create the perfect conditions for asymptomatic people to transmit the coronavirus. Widening social gatherings mean that the number of people who are close contacts of those who contract Covid is growing, making the work of contact tracers more challenging, if not impossible.
From the Wall Street Journal: The spread of the coronavirus across the U.S. swiftly accelerated this week, prompting state and local officials to levy new restrictions as the nation reported more than 100,000 new cases each day over the past 10 days.
More than 150,000 new cases of Covid-19 were re- ported Thursday, a record-breaking milestone that is more than triple the number of daily cases reported on average in early October, accord- ing to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. In 48 states and Washington, D.C., the pace of new cases recorded over the past week rose faster than the week prior, signaling increased levels of spread nationwide.
On Nov. 6, the seven-day average of new cases reported in the nation daily sat at 103,398. In less than a week, that average has grown by nearly 30,000, to an average of 131,445 new cases Thursday.
A record 67,096 coronavirus patients were being treated in hospitals Thursday, with 12,796 of those patients in in- tensive-care units, according to the Covid Tracking Project
To combat this, many governors are issuing stricter limits on private gatherings: New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo issued a 10-person limit this week, and similar limits have been placed in Ohio, Utah, Connecticut, Colorado and Rhode Island. Oregon has gone even further, limiting groups to no more than six.
More than 10.5 million cases have been recorded in the U.S., and more than 242,000 people have died.
Across the world: From the Wall Street Journal-A second wave of infections starting in late summer again made Europe the center of the pandemic. Governments responded by gradually tightening restrictions on daily life and their economies in the fall, culminating in recent weeks with the reimposition of less stringent nationwide lockdowns.
Now, cases appear to have peaked across the region, and in some countries are declining rapidly. Progress is uneven, though, and leaders are wary of letting their guard down too soon.
“This positive trend is recent, and therefore fragile,” French Prime Minister Jean Castex said Thursday. “It would be irresponsible to lift or loosen these measures now.”
Governments are hoping that by significantly reducing cases they can prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed and make it easier to keep on top of the pandemic with tools such as testing and contact tracing. The added hope now is that a vaccine might become available within months.
Even though the restrictions are less rigorous than earlier this year, it isn’t clear whether widespread compliance will be sustained long enough to drive down infections sufficiently— particularly with holidays approaching. to do them. They are a symptom of failure,” said Martin McKee, professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Two weeks after locking down, France is seeing signs that the second wave of Covid-19 could soon begin to ebb. Leading indicators such as new infections, as well as hospital and intensive-care-unit admissions for the virus are flat or dropping. Cases have plummeted in Ireland and Belgium and are leveling off in Spain and Germany. Cases are still rising in Italy and the U.K., though at a much slower pace than earlier in the fall.
The burden of Covid-19 on the region’s health-care systems is still significant. In France, a record 32,683 people were hospitalized with the disease, ac- cording to data from Thurs- day, surpassing the highest level from spring. In the U.K., there were 14,000. But the second wave hasn’t so far matched some of spring’s grim mile- stones. Deaths and intensive- care-unit occupancy remain well below the peaks of spring.
Public-health experts say countries should ease lock- downs cautiously, ideally only when cases are low and stable, and virus carriers can be swiftly detected by countries’ contact-tracing systems and isolated from others.
Social gatherings, with holidays approaching, should take place in as small a circle as possible, said Steven Van Gucht, chief virologist at Belgian health institute Sciensano.
Better testing approaches are needed to pick up more cases and manage outbreaks, said Kingston Mills, professor of experimental immunology at Trinity College Dublin.
“We can’t continue to lock down our workforce and expect our economies to survive,” he said.
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COVID-19 Safety Compliance Certificate Program for business owners and employees in Los Angeles County. A program for Los Angeles County businesses currently permitted to operate to voluntarily self-certify that they are fully implementing the required COVID-19 Protocols from the Los Angeles Department of Public Health (Public Health). This process will help business owners follow the required Protocols and maintain their operations with as much safety as possible for their staff, customers, and visitors. The COVID-19 Safety Compliance Certificate is not required, but it is recommended. It will demonstrate to the public that your business is complying with required Protocols. Read More