Emily Rusch
Vice President and Senior Director of State Offices, The Public Interest Network
New analysis: California receives “trending poorly” marks for COVID-19 containment measures
Media Contacts
CALPIRG Education Fund provides fact sheet based on metrics from coronavirus watchdog
CALPIRG Education Fund
Oakland — With America as a whole continuing to struggle in containing the COVID-19 virus, CALPIRG Education Fund released a new fact sheet today calling on California to maintain all current restrictions related to COVID-19, and take additional measures to improve containment.
This finding is based on analysis by CovidExitStrategy.org, a nonpartisan group of public health and crisis experts, which ranked California, as “trending poorly” based on its analysis of California performance on four Centers for Disease Control-recommended benchmarks.
“From early on in this pandemic, it’s been clear that we must listen to public health experts or suffer dire consequences,” said Emily Rusch, Executive Director of CALPIRG Education Fund. “What we are seeing right now in our state is that while we’re doing some things right, we must act more comprehensively to protect the health and welfare of our citizens and beat this virus.”
The fact sheet provides data in the four key categories: 14-day decline in influenza-like illness; declining COVID positive cases; diminishing percentage of COVID positive cases; and appropriate hospital capacity.
As of June 26, California was meeting only two of four benchmarks. Specifically, test positivity, the percentage of tests that have been coming back positive for COVID-19, has been increasing in California over the last 14 days. Additionally, the total number of COVID-19 cases has been increasing in the state over the last 14 days.
Nationally, only 6 states were meeting the standards in all four categories as of June 26. As of Sunday, the number had dropped to three.
“California must redouble its efforts in order to do its part to combat COVID-19,” said Rusch. “With an increasing total number of cases, and an increasing percentage of tests coming back positive, California needs to keep encouraging both individual and collective action to save lives.”
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