California Covid test positivity is approaching a record high and continues to rise due to the BA.5

On December 15, when the initial Omicron surge gained momentum, California restored the mandate to wear the mask indoors across the state. Tomás Aragón, a state public health official, said the move was “to add a layer of mitigation, as the Omicron variant, the disturbing variant as the World Health Organization called it, has increased prevalence in California, United States. United States and around the world, and it spread much more easily than the original SARS. – “CoV-2 virus and the delta variant.” At that time, the state’s mean 7-day test positivity rate was 2, 6%.

Today, the state is concerned about another variant called BA.5, one that is believed to have at least four times the growth advantage of the original Micron since December. Data from the CDC indicates that at the end of last week, BA.5 and its sister sub-variant BA.4 accounted for about 68 percent of new cases in the region, which primarily includes California, Arizona and Nevada. BA.5 covers the vast majority of these cases and looks set to carry all other options in the coming weeks.

California’s current 7-day test positivity rate is 16.7%. This gives the current summer the dubious honor of having the second highest rate of positive tests the state has seen during the pandemic. It is second only to the peak of last winter’s Omicron wave. And it goes up again.

As the growth rate of BA.5 is largely due to its ability to evade the protection provided by a previous infection and, to a lesser extent, the protection provided by vaccination, the state cannot rely on vaccination in the same way as the ‘Original Omicron. wave.

In addition, the three metrics of greatest concern to health officials are now available: hospital and intensive care beds occupied by people infected with Covid and the average number of deaths per day from Covid. much higher where they were before Christmas.

The director of public health in Los Angeles, the state’s most populous county, said yesterday he expects his county to move to the CDC’s “high” level of Covid designation next week due to rising numbers. If Los Angeles stays in that category for 14 days, the county will reset a mask warrant in public places.

Throughout the state, 35 of California’s 58 counties are also designated by the CDC. Some of them talked about the restoration of the mask. Not even the state.

A seemingly bright spot in the region’s situation dims upon closer scrutiny.

Cases reported in the past month, while steadily increasing, have not increased as fast as they did in December. The problem is that test results have dropped dramatically since December as more Californians use home kits, the results of which are not recorded in the official report.

Because of this, White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha told Lester Holt on NBC night news Last night “I have no doubts that now we miss the vast majority of infections”.

Even with limited test reports, the number reported in California today (13,000 new cases) is already 44% higher than the approximately 9,000 reported on December 15 last year. Which, combined with the high positivity of the Golden State test and a much more contagious variant, does not bode well.