Santa Clara County, California's technology hub, has seen coronavirus cases drastically slowing down over the past few days. And one of the primary reasons behind this is the aggressive measures taken by the health authorities to compel millions of people to stay at home.
Santa Clara Country was one of the first centers to report maximum cases of coronavirus in the United States. Health authorities at that time had predicted that coronavirus cases could surge more than 50,000 in that area. However, there has been a dramatic slowing of the cases because of a range of early measures taken by the health authorities.
What did the health authorities do?
Santa Clara, located south of San Francisco, boasts a population of 2 million. It was one of the first places in the United States where coronavirus cases started getting reported. Gradually, more people started testing positive for Covid-19 and there was once an estimate that as many as 50,000 could get infected by the coronavirus by May 1.
However, estimates are now that only 2,500 to 12,000 people might eventually get infected by coronavirus, said public health officer Sara Cody. On March 16, under Cody's leadership, an order was issued in six San Francisco Bay Area counties asking residents to stay at home. They were order to step out only for essential needs.
A similar order was issued by California's governor Gavin Newsom which was implemented across the state. Till then, that was the most restrictive clampdown in the United States. While other states were slow to respond and didn't take similar steps, these measures worked miracles. Cody said that initially the number of coronavirus cases would double every three days. That was in mid-March. The numbers are now doubling approximately every two weeks.
California still better off
Santa Clara and other San Francisco Bay Area counties imposed strict shelter-at-home rules which have now resulted in slowing down the rate of coronavirus cases. Cases are far lesser than the hard hit Los Angeles Country in Southern California.
Santa Clara, which is home to the headquarters of some of the biggest tech companies like Apple, Google and Facebook, along with San Francisco and four other Bay Area counties, as of Tuesday reported 3,532 coronavirus cases in a population of 6.7 million. This makes it one in every 1,900 affected by coronavirus. Los Angeles, on the other hand, reported 6,391 cases in a population of 10 million.
New York on the other hand has been the hardest hit with 140,086 coronavirus cases. Health officials are hopeful that social restrictions can be restricted in the area in the coming days. However, for that the slowing of the number of new cases has to be steady over a period of another two weeks.
