It’s been two weeks since the statewide order went out for all Californians to stay at home, and for all non-essential businesses throughout the state to close. As we’ve (hopefully) begun settling into our new routines, the question now becomes “is it working?” With the estimated peak of cases estimated to be three weeks away, it can be hard to tell at this point, but current data can offer a clue that we’re going in the right direction.
The governor himself has struck a tempered tone in his daily briefings, stating on Thursday “we’re not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination and we showed folks what we mean by that when we showed you our modeling yesterday. The reality is that we are buying time... 816 individuals are currently in the ICU, representative of 5.4% increase from yesterday. 1,922 people are in our hospital system with COVID-19 that are positively identified. Those are big numbers but well within our modeling and well within our capacity to serve and meet this moment.”
I have been following data on this website of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) based out of the University of Washington, and it has been a great resource for date visualization. Looking at the chart for California today, it appears that actions taken in the state are helping and that we’re projected to have enough beds and ventilators for the peak number of cases coming in a couple weeks:
Looking at projected need specifically for ICU beds:
Of course there’s still a lot of shaded area of uncertainty above the line representing available ICU beds. But the current trend looks promising. Will we be able to adhere to that trend line? Only time will tell but the data gives me hope that at least in this part of the country, we may have done enough, soon enough, to avoid the worst of it.
I invite everyone to head to the website to look at the different charts, they have estimates for all states and US territories, as well as for the US as a whole.