By Pamela Cruz I Peninsula 360 Press [P360P]
California Governor Gavin Newsom said the bed capacity of the Intensive Care Units (ICU) in the Bay Area is 7.9 percent, while for Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley it is 0 percent.
"The 0 percent does not represent that there are no ICU beds available, but only that we are in a phase of overcapacity in terms of the search strategy for these units," the official said at his first press conference of the year.
Gavin Newsom, governor of California.
Newsom explained that this Sunday, January 3, 29,633 cases of COVID-19 were registered in the state, while the seven-day average is 37,845 new cases, and the positivity rate is 12.4 percent.
He said hospitalizations grew 18 percent, a seven-fold increase in the past two months, while the state is seeing six times the number of ICU patients in this period.
He noted that the average number of cases in the last 7 days dropped significantly, but this was mainly because the holidays - such as December 25 and January 1 - were not tested.
In the state, 97 deaths were recorded on Jan. 3, while the average for the last few days was 336 people who died from the disease. These figures may also be lower due to the holidays, since the average for the last 14 days is 3,959 deaths.
