Health officials said on Friday that we may be in the midst of the worst COVID-19 outbreak of the entire pandemic, even though the test numbers do not show that.

Now, a densely populated area in California says it can restore the mask in just a few weeks.

“What we’re seeing recently is that there’s an increase in SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater and it’s not showing us how cases have been in the past,” said Marlene Wolfe, director of Project Scan-Wastewater. Supervisor.

In fact, surveys taken in cities like Palo Alto and San Francisco’s Oceanside show that there are higher levels of COVID now than there were a few months ago when we thought we had reached the peak of the epidemic.

But when we compare the numbers and the number of our cases, there is another story.

In Santa Clara County, the seven-day average was over 5,000 cases in January, but currently the number is around 1,000.

“The case data clearly shows that there is an increase right now but it doesn’t give you a direct comparison to previous periods because of how the way the testing and interpretation of the data has changed,” Wolfe said.

Experts said home testing explains the discrepancy. More and more people are testing at home and not to mention that hospitals are starting to step up.

This has forced the Los Angeles County Department of Health to consider bringing back masks if their hospitalizations for COVID-19 improve over the next two weeks.

Some Bay Area health experts say it’s the right move.

On paper, the cases of COVID-19 are high, but the statistics can give us another idea. NBC Bay Area’s Jessica Aguirre spoke with Dr. Peter Chin-Hong of UCSF to clarify.

“I think it’s a good thing to start masking in the house because it’s a simple way that we can start quickly and reduce the transmission to other people and once we reduce the number of people in the community we can affect the number of people admitted to the hospital,” said Dr. Luis Rubio of UCSF.

Almost every county in the Bay Area has said that at this time, they are not considering bringing in a mask, but they are closely monitoring our hospitals and any procedures in the state.

Rubio believes that will soon change.

“We are at a high point and I think the cases can continue without any kind of medical treatment based on the amount of waste water there is a chance that the cases will continue,” he said.



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