San Francisco's number of confirmed COVID-19 cases rose 16 percent today to 152, and the city has still not seen its first death from this pandemic. But to our south, numbers are rising in San Mateo County (161 cases as of Monday night, with one death), and Santa Clara County's count jumped to 375 on Tuesday, 195 of whom are hospitalized, with a total of 16 deaths. (See all the latest county-by-county numbers here.)
The total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the nine-county Bay Area stands at 990 as of 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, and we are more than likely going to cross the 1,000 threshold by evening. [Update: As of 5 p.m., the confirmed case number is now 1,014 for the Bay Area.] That means the case number — likely, in part, due to increased testing — has more than tripled in the last week (there were 325 confirmed cases in the Bay Area last Tuesday).
The situation in New York is even more dire, where cases appear to be doubling every three days, and where there are currently over 25,600 confirmed cases. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is now estimating that the state needs 140,000 hospital beds, and it currently only has 53,000 available.
Santa Clara County, where most of the Bay Area deaths from the virus have occurred so far, is anticipating needing thousands more critical care beds — the county currently has 350, about 80 percent of which are currently occupied, per Palo Alto Online. Currently, the county has 13 people in intensive-care units (ICUs), as the Mercury News reports. The number of confirmed cases in the county have nearly doubled since Friday, and six people have died in just the past two days, bringing the county's death toll to 16.
Cases are escalating in Alameda County as well, with 134 cases reported there, and a second death in the county recorded Tuesday. In Marin County, the county's public health officer, Dr. Matt Willis, has, himself, contracted the coronavirus. As the Marin Independent Journal reports, Willis is among the county's 47 confirmed cases, and in a video posted to YouTube he describes how he began feeling symptoms on Friday.
In San Francisco, hospitals are planning for upticks in cases, and potentially converting wards to anticipate more. As the Chronicle reports, the city has hired 82 permanent nurses over the past several weeks and plans to hire 28 more. As of last week, SF General only had two coronavirus patients, and had 10 of its 50 ventilators in use. It's not clear what the count is today, or how many of San Francisco's 152 cases have required hospitalization.
The city's director of public health Dr. Grant Colfax has said he expects there to be a surge in new cases requiring hospitalization over the next week or two, if not sooner.
If you have a fever and a dry cough, as well as body aches and fatigue, and you believe you need a coronavirus test, you can request one through your doctor. Here is the current list of locations where testing is occurring around the Bay Area.
