On Tuesday, August 10, Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Steve Rosansky released a video announcement to Chamber members and other businesses and community members providing an update in increasing coronavirus indicators and new mask mandates.
Rosansky began with an overview of the weekly coronavirus indexes, all of which had increased from the previous week. The cases per 100,000 rose from 12.7 last week to 19.0 this week, the positivity percentage rose from 6.9 percent to 8.3 percent, and the health equity metric rose from 6.6 percent to 8.5 percent.
“Although the number of people hospitalized with coronavirus rose from 333 to 461, the good news is that the number of hospitalizations has stabilized over the last few days,” said Rosansky. “However, the number of ICU patients continues to rise, which is to be expected as they lag hospitalizations.”
Rosansky noted that the California Department of Public Health has issued a new order which requires all visitors to hospitals, skilled nursing facilities and intermediate care facilities to be either vaccinated or have tested negative for coronavirus in the past 72 hours for indoor visits.
“The continued climb in the coronavirus indexes is troubling and indicates the stabilization in the number of people hospitalized with coronavirus may be short lived as more cases tend to be more hospitalizations,” said Rosansky. “The upside is that unvaccinated individuals are taking note of the recent uptick, and the number of people getting vaccinated over the last few weeks has been climbing. As of today, over 77 percent of eligible persons in California have received at least one shot of vaccine.”
As more people get vaccinated, Rosansky suggested the number of people who wind up in the hospital and ICU will decrease because vaccinate people who contract a breakthrough case of coronavirus tend to be less sick and have substantially lower hospitalization rates than the unvaccinated.
“Anecdotally, I’ve noticed that a lot more people are wearing masks indoors and outdoors,” shared Rosansky. “On a recent visit to Costco, I’d say 90 percent of the people were masked up. This is on the heels of federal, state and private business mandates for employees to wear masks indoors whether vaccinated or unvaccinated.”
On a related note, said Rosansky, “more and more federal and state agencies as well as private businesses are announcing that employees will have to show proof of vaccination to continue working for the agency or company.”
Rosansky concluded his video by stating “get vaccinated and be safe.”
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