Four times in the past eight days, California has set COVID-19 death records in a single day.
This time, the state erased its previous mark, reporting 193 deaths on Wednesday, 29 more than the previous record set the day before, according to data compiled by this news organization. It also reported its third highest number of new cases, 11,965, although the seven-day average held steady at around 9,200 per day, roughly where it has been for the past two weeks.
At that time, California went from averaging 91 deaths per day from the virus to 124 per day, where it was Tuesday, higher than at any other point in the pandemic. In comparison, there were 432 deaths statewide during the week ending July 4; In the past seven days, there have been double: 870.
Most of last week’s occurred in the Central Valley with a decreasing share in Los Angeles County, though LA contributed a whopping proportion of Tuesday’s cases (4,741) and deaths (90, a new record). . Thirty-five percent of virus deaths in the state in the past week occurred in Los Angeles (which has about 25% of the state’s population), slightly less than the first week of July, but the Valley de San Joaquín had grown to 16%. of the total during the past week, despite representing approximately 10% of the population.
San Joaquin County reported its second consecutive day with double-digit deaths (13 on Tuesday), something that had happened only once before this week, while San Bernardino County in the Inland Empire reported the most deaths due to the pandemic (24).
The Bay Area also had one of the deadliest days of the pandemic, with 19 deaths spread across its nine counties. Each of Marin and Sonoma counties added seven new deaths, tied for the fifth largest in the state on Tuesday, while there were two in Santa Clara and one in San Francisco, Contra Costa and Solano counties.
Still, the region, which accounts for about 20% of California’s population, had accounted for 8% of deaths in the state in the past week.
It was the second death of COVID-19 in the Bay Area in one day, outnumbered by just one day three months ago, on April 22, when 21 Bay Area residents perished from the disease, while the 1,315 cases New to the region were the bulk. The pandemic.
There were a staggering 410 new cases in Contra Costa County, most by any Bay Area jurisdiction in a single day, followed by 253 in Santa Clara, 140 in Alameda, 132 in San Francisco, and 108 in San Mateo. . Overall, the region averaged about 970 new cases per day in the past week, less than a week ago but 157% more than five weeks ago.
The virus has slowed enough in the region for San Francisco, Santa Clara, Alameda, Napa and Sonoma counties to bring their case rates below the state threshold of approximately 7 cases per 100,000 per day (100 total cases per capita in 14 days). However, each county in the Bay Area remains on the state monitoring list; it requires a sustained decrease in spread to get off the list and for businesses to reopen.
The region as a whole totaled approximately 12.1 cases per 100,000 residents per day over the past week, according to this news organization’s analysis, well below the state’s rate of spread of approximately 23.2 per 100,000 (15 in the nation) .
There were 16 counties in the state with a per capita case rate greater than 25, which Harvard scientists rank as “red” or the highest risk level for spread, including the eight counties in the San Joaquin Valley. The rate in those counties was 50 new cases per 100,000 residents per day, double the minimum for Harvard’s worst designation.
The list has also grown to include counties as far north as Glenn and Colusa, with per capita rates in the 1930s; to the central coast in Monterey County, where the rate is correct at 25 per 100,000; and over Sierra Nevadas to Mono County, where 40.6 per 100,000 residents tested positive per day in the past week.
The United States continues to add approximately 65,000 new cases each day, a per capita rate of approximately 20 per 100,000, as it has for the past two weeks. On Wednesday, the cumulative case count rose to 4.4 million and the number of deaths across the country crossed 150,000, more than any other country, about 46 per 100,000 Americans.
