Mendocino sees largest single day COVID spike, 2 dead this week — 71 new cases yesterday, 2558 total — NorCal retains 33% ICU capacity

By Adrian Fernandez Baumann | January 1, 2021

This graph shows total case count on the left axis. On the right axis are the daily new cases, as well as a 7 day, lagging, rolling average of daily increases. The green bars are holidays, beginning on the left with Memorial day, then Independence Day, Labor Day, Halloween, the day before Thanksgiving (no numbers were available on Thanksgiving), and Christmas Eve. So far a fairly obvious pattern of surges following holidays is evident.

MENDOCINO Co., 1/1/21 — The people hoping that the end of 2020 would mean a end to the tribulation of that terrible year woke up to rough news today, as the COVID-19 surge continues to tear through California with case numbers surging hire than ever.

Dr. Fauci’s warnings of surges upon surges appear to be coming to fruition as the Thanksgiving surge is compounded by a Christmas surge. In Los Angeles mortuaries and funeral homes have run out of space, oxygen and essential anesthetics are running out, and fire departments and paramedics have begun to warn that they might be stretched too thin to assist people who fall ill or are struck by an accident.

Thankfully, Mendocino has so far been spared the worst of the surge harrowing the rest of the state, though the county is reviewing its mass casualty plans:

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Sadly, the county has begun to review our Mass Fatality plans. Thankfully, we are not in need of these resources now, but given the trajectory or our surge, both here and statewide, we must be prepared. It is up to all of us to keep Mendocino County safe.
— County of Mendocino (@countymendocino) December 31, 2020

Indeed, ours is the only region that has managed to avoid the stricter locked down that could be triggered by low ICU capacity numbers. As of today the state’s website indicates that the Northern California region, which includes Mendocino, Lake and Humboldt counties, but not Sonoma County, retains 33% of ICU beds open. This number would normally be horrifyingly low, but in the COVID era, it’s a rare bright spot.

While, we’re not in the stricter regional lockdown we remain well into the “purple zone.”

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In early Sept. the county began to provide official information from the state about about the official percentage of tests conducted daily that come back positive, and the number of new cases per day. The state uses the average number of new cases per day normed to per 100,000 people, on a seven day lagging average, and the positive cases as the determiners of which “tier” the county sits in.

Still, as the rest of the state surges, our exceess ICU capacity is likely to be eaten up by transfers. The County of Mendocino warned on Twitter two nights ago that in Mendocino County only five ICU beds remains open at that time.

As the ICU's in other counties and regions to the south get filled up, they'll be transferring their patients, eventually to hospitals in Mendocino County. Currently, we have only five available ICU beds. The surge has truly arrived.
— County of Mendocino (@countymendocino) December 31, 2020

Here in Mendocino County New Year’s Eve saw the highest single day spike in new cases with 71 new confirmed positive tests. Though the raw number on the day after Thanksgiving was higher, that day included two days of data given that no information had been released on Thanksgiving.

Indeed, yesterday’s number were nearly enough to reverse the the downward trends of the Christmas period. As even Governor Newsom had noted in one of his press conferences, the period leading up to and just after Christmas had seen a plateau in case numbers across much of the state, and even a drop in some places.

As is clearly visible in the graph below, Mendocino County saw a dramatic surge beginning around Halloween and peaking mid-Dec, daily new cases even went down at the end of December. However, in more recent days it appears that there’s a new surge. Why this is is unclear. It’s possible that testing went down somewhat during the holiday season, but it’s also possible that we are now entering a new surge based on Christmas travels.

This graph runs from roughly right after the first surge began till the present. It shows total case count in (left axis) in a logarithmic scale. Log scales are useful for showing data sets with a big spread, and areas of exponential growth. In a log scale linear growth is a curve with a quick growth followed by a gentle, flatish, upward growth (basically the mirror image of exponential growth in a linear plot). On the other hand exponential growth looks like a steeply sloping up straight line. As this graph demonstrates well, there have been moments where growth in cases becomes exponential, followed by times when we successfully “flattened the curve” and went back to slow linear growth. On the right axis are the daily increases, as well as a 7 day lagging rolling average of increases.

Deaths are also increasing. Notable here is time period between deaths. During the summer surge people were sometimes dying of COVID daily in Mendocino County. As this graph shows, that time has once more narrowd down to a couple days between deaths.