“Given what we’ve seen before, and the shock and trauma we’ve been through, even one or two cases if they go up, it makes us nervous, Chopra said.
California officials are trying to assure residents that they’re better prepared this time around. Governor Gavin Newsom said last week that Covid victims occupied just 8% of available hospital beds. The state also has 46 million N95 masks, he said, compared with 1 million in March.
“We’ve never been better positioned,” Newsom said.
But Los Angeles County could use up its beds in weeks, officials there warn. And rural Imperial County along the Mexican border has been so badly hit that some patients have been flown to San Francisco, more than 400 miles away.
Newsom alternately scolds residents for not taking the virus seriously and reminds them of the shared resolve they showed this spring, when a San Francisco Bay Area outbreak threatened to rage out of control.
“We did an incredible job, collectively, as a state, 40 million of you,” he said last week. “We have the capacity to do that again.”
Officials in the Seattle area also have tried to reassure residents, and they pin some of the increase on the young. More than 130 recent cases have been linked to fraternity houses at the University of Washington. This week, the city’s Space Needle was topped with a massive flag: “Mask Up.”
In Louisiana, Governor John Bel Edwards made masks mandatory on Saturday and limited the size of gatherings. Confirmed Covid-19 cases hit a one-day high of just over 2,700 in April, but more than 2,600 cases were reported Friday.
Joseph Kanter, the assistant state health officer, said the deadly spring is still vivid for residents of Louisiana’s larger cities.
“People in New Orleans have a real visceral memory of the spike in March and April and have a real understanding of what this virus can do,” he said. “Memory drives behavior here. People are more conscientious, because they know how bad this virus can get.”