Butte County hospitalizations increase; CA posts single-day record of COVID cases

Gov.

Newsom gives stark warning of possible new stay at home order in purple tiered counties.

The state will now look at hospitalizations along with other statistics to determine a response.

New tonight - california reported a new single day record of over 20,000 positive cases of covid-19.

Action news now reporter esteban reynoso joins us.

Esteban, how many cases in total does california have now?

That number shatters the previous record by more than 2,000.

Which brings california's total to over 1.25 million cases.

And in butte county we added 49 new cases.

And also added 12 hospitalizations for covid-19.

I spoke with people in butte county to see how they feel about these increasing numbers.

Much of northern california remains in the purple tier, including butte county.

And governor newsom says, the state will look to gather more data in those purple tiered counties to determine if a new stay at home order will be necessary.

"we're not just now looking at positivity rates, we're not just now looking at case rates.

We are now looking in real time at hospitalization numbers and icu capacity in those regions."

Action news reached out to hospitals in butte county.

Oroville and enloe hospital told us off camera that they are still operating as normal, despite the increase in hospitalizations.

Butte county now has a total of 35 hospitalizations, more than a third of those announced today but some people contribute the rise in covid-19 related numbers to the holidays.

"i think there are definitely numbers on the rise and it's been like that lately a lot more recently.

You see a lot more people going out because of the holiday season and what not.

I'm not too concerned, i always like to go out and wear my trusted mask, keep a little distance between me and whoever it is i'm talking with.

Everytime i go home to see family, just make sure i get tested."

"if these trends continue, we're going to have to take a much more dramatic arguably drastic action including taking a look at those purple tier counties.

They are now 51 out of the 58 counties."

If the state decides to move forward with a new stay at home order -- they say it will primarily target the purple tiered counties.

Alan, back to you.

Chico remains the city with the highest number of total positive cases with over