- As the San Francisco Bay Area's shelter-in-place order crests the 2-week mark, some health experts say the social distancing measures made early on may be working.
- Medical officials say hospitals are not overwhelmed, and case counts - though still climbing - are much lower than in places such as the state of New York.
- New York state has, however, tested far more for the virus than has California.
- Officials still stress the vital importance for residents to continue practicing social distancing and remaining in lockdown to curb the spread of the virus.
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Tuesday marked the 14th day of a regionwide shelter-in-place order implemented in the Bay Area on March 17 to help stunt the spread of the coronavirus disease, known as COVID-19.
The numbers of confirmed cases and reported deaths continue to rise throughout the region as the order's first 2 weeks - the duration believed to be the incubation period for the illness - come to an end. But the trajectory of the virus's spread isn't as violent in the region as it is elsewhere in the US, and some local health experts believe it's because of the early measures taken by officials.
The region was the first in the US to implement an order that directed residents to stay in their homes. The state of California followed just days later. Since then, other parts of the US that have enforced some kind of stay-at-home order are looking to the region as a model for how quickly the outbreak could be contained - and when life could return to normal.
Data, case counts, and hospitalizations are currently some of the best indicators of how aggressive an outbreak is in a given region or state. California has more than 8,700 confirmed cases, with over 2,550 in the Bay Area. Those numbers are dwarfed by confirmed infection counts in states like New York, where at least 83,712 cases are overwhelming hospitals and sending "deathcare" workers into overdrive as Business Insider's Dave Mosher reported.
But Bay Area public health officials are saying that apparent upswing aside, pinpointing a finish line is difficult.
"People want us to say when it's going to be over, and we can't tell them," Contra Costa County health officer Chris Farnitano told the San Francisco Chronicle. "We have to follow the data."
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