Rate Of New COVID-19 Cases Slows In San Diego County

Speaker 1: 00:00 As we tentatively start talking about when it might be safe to start lifting the statewide stay at home order. All eyes are on the numbers, how fast are new cases doubling how rapidly our hospital beds filling up, joining us as we'll hunt spree voice of San Diego reporter who's done a lot of work with the San Diego County data the last few weeks to see where we are on that all important curve. We'll thanks for joining us. Happy to be here. So what would you say are the most important numbers to look at to get a sense of where we are at countywide? Is it the number of new cases, the overall cases, the number of people who've died? Yeah, that's a tricky question. Um, and I think that one of the best numbers you can look at is hospitalizations because that number is not affected by testing data. The death date is tricky because it's kind of far behind. Speaker 1: 00:51 But I think if we look at the hospitalization data and the new cases data, what it tells us is that the number of new cases is shrinking and the curve is flattening in San Diego as of the most recent weeks data. So your analysis does show that the curve is beginning to flatten, but how confident are you that that assessment is a true reflection of what's going on? I feel very confident for a couple of reasons that that's a a fair assessment. The new cases data shows us that the curve is flattening. The hospitalization data shows us that the curve is flattening and a County officials are also saying that the curve is flattening and I think they're looking at slightly more advanced data behind the scenes that we don't see. That certainly does not mean we're out of the woods. You know, that's not a, I think what anyone is saying. Speaker 1: 01:43 I think if we were to undo all our social distancing measures, epidemiologists say that the curve would stay in straight up again and this virus could come roaring back on us. No McDonald's. If the County said last month that we likely had 10 times more cases than what the testing was showing, but he did revise that number yesterday. Is that because there's more testing going on? Well, testing is one of the big unanswered questions in this whole thing. Honestly. Um, you know, if you look at the test, the number of tests we've been doing on a daily basis, it's really very up and down between 800 a day and about 1500 a day and there hasn't been a lot of consistency there. So I think one of the big questions going forward is how are we going to truly increase testing capacity so that we know when it's safe for people to start coming out of isolation. Right. McDonald did say that that figure of the number of more cases that are being tested has been revised to perhaps two to four times as many as, as we've actually got a pretty big drop. What are some of the other shortcomings of the data that we have from the County? Well, it's really Speaker 1: 03:00 hard to understand the growth, right? On a day to day basis. You know, the, the numbers of new cases are fairly erratic and so as, as you pointed out, as the test data, as the number of tests changes every day, that changes the reliability of the numbers that are coming out. But, uh, the doubling right in hospitalizations for the past seven days was 13 days. So that means that if the growth rate of the past week stayed the same, the number of new cases would double every 13 days. The County has shown us projections that a six day doubling rate could be devastating to our hospital system. But this 13 day doubling rates seems to be something that we could, that our hospitals can sustain, where they could continue treating all the patients they need to. It gives other people time to get better and get out of the hospital so other people can use those beds. Um, so that 13 day doubling right is, is a pretty solid number and it's pretty encouraging I would say. Speaker 2: 04:05 Are the curves that you're seeing for San Diego County similar to the rate of spread in other regions? Other cities? Speaker 1: 04:11 Not at all. I mean, you know, that is one of the mysteries I think of this virus that epidemiologists want to eventually unravel, unravel. If, if you look at the curve in New York, I mean it's look to like the side of a building at times. I mean their cases were doubling every couple of days in the curve was just going straight up and uh, you see other cities, uh, you know, new Orleans where it's been closer to a 45 degree angle. Um, and, and our curve started out, you know, roughly on a 45 degree angle. Um, but then as I say, over the last week, it does, it has flattened, you know, the, the doubling right now is somewhere above 13 days. And in previous weeks we were seeing a doubling rate of seven days or before that even five days. And if we'd have stayed on that five day doubling rate curve, it could've just been a disaster for our hospitals. And like I said, of course, you know, this is a over, if we stopped social distancing now the curve could really come roaring back. Speaker 2: 05:12 Yes. I mean, remind us again, why is it that when we sees the curve flattening like this, we should not assume that it's time to get back to back? Speaker 1: 05:20 Well, um, because it really looks like the social distancing measures that we've put in place are what has flattened the curve. You know, we started putting our social distancing measures in place well ahead of New York in terms of where they were at on their own curve and, and that seems to have worked and we see that from a number of data points. Um, flu cases are down as well right now from where they were last year, which indicates social distance thing is working. So, so if that's what's helping flatten our curve, if we were to undo that, it just follows that, that the curve would, uh, the, the curve flattening would undo itself as well. And, and we could be in a really big predicament. You know, we don't know how this virus travels in the spring and the summer. I think there are a lot of unanswered questions about that going forward, but I think we certainly know right now that we would be at grave risk. We stopped social distancing Speaker 2: 06:18 and I, I guess a lot of people are wondering if flattening the curve automatically means that it'll go on longer. Uh, might it not mean just that there are fewer cases hospitalized overall? Speaker 1: 06:28 I th I think it could mean that, um, I think that ideally as you said, the, we wanted to flatten the curve and make this go on longer. I mean that was actually the idea dr McDonald's said with the County is that if we make, make this whole process last longer, which is agonizing, we give the hospitals a better chance to actually be able to absorb all of the patients. And, um, I think that as I mentioned before, the way we begin to come out of this is to have widespread testing available so we can rule out people who are asymptomatic and say, okay, we know this person is safe to come out of isolation. And, and that's the big plan I think that we're all looking for from the County is when will we get that widespread testing so that we can begin to slowly and safely, um, start things back to normal, so to speak. Speaker 2: 07:25 Well, will, thanks so much for helping us keep track of the numbers. Absolutely. Thank you. That's Willow Hansberry with voice of San Diego.