By Pamela Cruz I Peninsula 360 Press [P360P]
California Governor Gavin Newsom said the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) bed capacity in the Bay Area is 7.9 percent, while for Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley it stands at 0 percent.
"The 0 percent does not represent that there is no availability of ICU beds, but only represents that we are in an overcapacity phase in terms of the search strategy for these units," the official clarified in his first press conference of the year.
Gavin Newsom, governor of California.
Newsom detailed that only this Sunday, January 3, 29,633 cases of COVID-19 were registered in the state, while the seven-day average stands at 37,845 new cases, and the positivity rate stands at 12.4 percent.
Also, he said, hospitalizations grew 18 percent, representing a seven-fold increase in the last 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 that was mainly because on holidays - such as Dec. 25 and Jan. 1 - no testing was done.
In the state 97 deaths were recorded on January 3, while the average in recent days was 336 people died from this disease, figures that may also be lower because of the holidays, since the average in the last 14 days is 3,959 deaths.
