Update: Starting Sunday evening, Governor Gavin Newsom is expected to file a statewide stay-at-home order on Monday.

The much-welcomed slight increase in the availability of intensive care in hospitals in the Gulf region and the slowing rates of coronavirus transmission paint a hopeful outlook for the coming weeks, but on Sunday there was no indication of when the region could exit the so-so-stalled demand to stay home Normal life.

State health officials said on Sunday that the four-week forecast in the Gulf region did not meet the criteria for lifting restrictions, and an update would be released on Monday.

Hopes were raised when ICU availability in the Gulf region jumped to 23.4%, in data released on Saturday, mirroring the condition on Friday, after staying in odd numbers for weeks. That was an unusually large jump from 6.5% the day before, and it seems to indicate the worst of the rally could be in the past. This sentiment was reinforced by a statement sent Sunday to The Chronicle from Ali Bay, a spokesperson for the state’s public health department.

“We see promising signs that California is slowly emerging from the most severe stages of this epidemic,” the statement said.

State data on Sunday showed that the rate of positive tests in California over the past 14 days was 9.8% – down 3.9 percentage points from the previous two weeks. The data showed that California reported 24,111 new cases of coronavirus on Saturday, which is a less than 1% increase over Friday’s totals.

But in San Francisco, Sunday was paused by the good news that led Mayor London Post to predict Friday that the city may be able to soon. ‘Start reopening under California guidelines’ Because of lower transmission rates. A day after recording the lowest number of new infections with the Coronavirus in two months, 111, San Francisco reported a slight rise on Sunday, 283 new cases. And there have been fewer than 200 new infections every day since Monday, but Sunday was more in line with the rise in daily infections last week.

San Francisco also recorded one of the highest death rates in the month, 15, after a week of single or zero days.

City officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest statistics, but per-day trends have often proven misleading during the course of the pandemic.

Dr. John Schwartzberg, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, Berkeley, said he was “initially confident” that the current surge, which began at the end of November, has peaked.

“That’s what the data looks like, and frankly, it’s what the data looks like at the national level,” he said, with the exception of two other countries. However, he added, there is no clear end in sight. “What we see in the last two years here in the US and in California is that we got a raise and a slogan, but we’re never back to where we were before. It’s like climbing stairs.”

Under the California system, a regional home stay application is supposed to be lifted when the ICU availability in the district is expected to equal or exceed 15% given the next four weeks. The forecast looks specifically at ICU capacity at the end of the four-week period.

For example, the state’s Department of Public Health will analyze Monday’s data to make a forecast for Feb.22. The projections are based on current regional ICU capacity, community transmission rates and regional case rates. The country analyzes the data twice a week.

State officials reported Sunday that nearly 2.2 million vaccinations have been administered statewide out of 4.1 million doses distributed as they accelerate to recover from an initial rollout slower than expected.

The nationwide photo of the vaccination caused Xavier Becera, a former California state attorney who was appointed by President Biden as US health secretary, to express his frustration Sunday across long lines, supply delays and confusion over where and when to get the shots.

“The plane is on a ramp and we will pull it up,” he told CNN. This is not America. … that’s not how we treat those we consider vulnerable and who need the vaccine most. “

Becera said he couldn’t predict when all Americans who wanted a bullet would be able to get it. Biden has pledged to distribute 100 million vaccines in his first 100 days in office.

The Plaser County Police Office said on Saturday, in Plaser County, last week, a person died hours after receiving the vaccination, after testing positive for the Coronavirus in late December. Officials said the provincial public health department did not provide the vaccine. On Sunday, sheriff’s office officials said they had no further information.

The authors Lauren Hernandez and Jill Tucker of the San Francisco Chronicle contributed to this report.