California has once again set a new record for most coronavirus-related deaths in a single day, with 174 deaths reported on Tuesday.
It is the third time this month that California breaks the record for deaths in a single day and the second in just a week, according to the Los Angeles Times’ California Coronavirus Tracker, which counts the cases and deaths of the state’s 58 counties. . The previous record for a single day was set on July 22, when 158 deaths were reported.
Since COVID-19’s first documented death in February, there have been 8,716 Californians who died after a coronavirus infection. That’s almost three times the death toll resulting from the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, which killed more than 3,000 people.
The daily average of coronavirus-related deaths in the past seven days has never been higher, now at 118.
California coronavirus deaths per day, effective July 28, 2020.
(Los Angeles Times)
While much has been said about the death toll in California being much lower than in other US states like New York, where 32,645 people have died, other nations have suffered a much less severe death toll than California.
The cumulative number of coronavirus-related deaths in Japan is approximately 1,000; South Korea, 300; Australia, 167; New Zealand, 22; and Taiwan, 7. Japan and South Korea each have a larger population than California.
In the United States, more than 149,000 people infected with the coronavirus have died. No other country has a worse death toll
Nationally, the United States has recorded an average of approximately 65,000 new cases per day, more than double the rate in mid-June.
By various measures, the coronavirus pandemic is now worse in many areas of California than in the week leading up to Memorial Day, some more grim than others.
The San Joaquin Valley, an eight-county region of the Central Valley that stretches from Stockton to Bakersfield, is one of the regions where pandemic conditions have dramatically deteriorated. In the weeklong period that ended Memorial Day, 42 residents of the San Joaquin Valley died from the coronavirus; In the seven-day period ending Monday, 105 residents died.
Deaths are also increasing in the Sacramento seven-county region. During the same period, weekly deaths increased from 4 to 25.
The nine-county San Francisco Bay Area has seen its weekly death toll nearly triple in the same time period: 20 to 57; The number of weekly deaths in San Diego County doubled in the same time period, from 28 to 55.
The southern California five-county area, which includes Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties, has seen weekly deaths rise from 357 to 493 in that same time period, an increase of 38%.
There are some signs that California’s most recent increase, while continuing to grow, has begun to slow. On Tuesday, California registered an average of 9,157 new confirmed cases daily over the past week, an increase of 2% from the previous week. That’s a much slower increase than what happened on July 14, when the daily average of new cases last week was 8,902, a 20% jump from the previous week.
Additionally, the rate at which coronavirus tests return positive has been stable in recent weeks across the state. A Times analysis found that California’s seven-day positive coronavirus test rate has generally been between 7% and 8% since July 5. In addition, the effective state-wide transmission rate of coronavirus is estimated to be 1.02, meaning that every 1 person infected, on average, transmits the virus to another 1.02 people.
But looking at the average hides deep problems in the hardest hit areas of California. In the San Joaquin Valley, the transmission rate of the virus is as high as 1.4, Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency, said this week at a press conference in Stockton, “that it tells us that we have a lot of work to do to get the transmission rates here in the Central Valley. ”
In some hospitals in this part of the Central Valley, 65% of regular hospital beds are full of COVID-19 patients, Ghaly said. Federal medical teams have been dispatched to hospitals in the Central Valley and southern California.
In the Central Valley, “you’re not close to being under control there,” said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, chair of UC San Francisco’s Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. “When we think of a state, our average numbers look better, but we can’t forget that in the middle of the state, the numbers look worse.”
The same problem can occur at the county level, where a county in general might look good, “but there are communities that still have high transmission rates,” Bibbins-Domingo said.
“And unless we focus our attention on areas where there are high transmission rates, we are not going to control either the county or the state,” Bibbins-Domingo said. “And that’s one of the fallacies in California that only constantly looks at the average effects, whether it’s at the state level or within a county.”
And while there are some people in the state who have called COVID-19 a hoax, there are clear signs that this pandemic is, in fact, the worst global public health crisis in more than a century.
In Los Angeles County, Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said COVID-19 is on track to be the second leading cause of death this year, ahead of other natural causes such as Alzheimer’s disease and stroke. .
COVID-19 has already killed nearly three times the number of people in Los Angeles County who died of the flu or pneumonia during the last eight-month flu season. Between October and May, 1,521 people died from the flu and pneumonia; As of Tuesday, 4,427 people died from COVID-19 in Los Angeles County.
The daily number of healthcare workers who are infected with the coronavirus is also on the rise. As of Tuesday, there were an average of 310 health workers infected with the coronavirus daily during the previous week in California, a number that has more than doubled since Memorial Day.
A total of 119 healthcare workers in California have died after being diagnosed with COVID-19. Authorities have confirmed that more than 22,000 health workers have been infected.
COVID-19’s disproportionate impact by race and ethnicity is also growing. California Latino residents have been infected at a cumulative rate of 1,087 cases per 100,000 Latino residents. That’s three times worse than the rate for white residents, which is 358 cases per 100,000 white residents.
California black residents are 51% more likely to have contracted the coronavirus than white residents, with a rate of 542 cases per 100,000 black residents.
Latinos are now three times more likely to test positive than whites in California.
(Los Angeles Times)
Black and Latino residents are also dying at disproportionate rates.
Black residents make up 6% of California’s population and still account for 8.5% of the state’s COVID-19 deaths. Latino residents account for 39% of California’s population and 46% of deaths.
The disparity is particularly noticeable among Latino residents of working age.
Of Californians ages 50 to 64, 65% of coronavirus deaths have occurred among Latinos, even though Latinos represent only 32% of Californians in this age range.
Among Californians ages 35-49, Latinos accounted for 78% of coronavirus-related deaths, even though Latinos in that age range accounted for just 42% of the population.
And for California adults under 35, Latinos account for 62% of coronavirus deaths, despite comprising 45% of the state’s population in that age group.
Younger black California adults are also dying from COVID-19 at a disproportionate rate, accounting for 15% of deaths, despite comprising 7% of the state’s population in this age group.
Health experts are deeply concerned about the outbreaks that have greatly devastated low-income Latino essential workers in California, affecting workers in agriculture, factories, and food processing facilities.
The largest outbreak in Los Angeles County, which infected more than 300 people and caused four deaths, forced the temporary closure of the Los Angeles Apparel factory.
Three other outbreak companies in Los Angeles County were ordered closed this week: S&S Foods of Azusa, Mission Foods Corp. of Commerce, and Golden State Foods Corp. of Industry. Each facility had outbreaks where at least 40 people became infected, said Los Angeles County Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer.
The companies did not notify the county once they had at least three coronavirus cases, Ferrer said, and the county is calling for better infection control protocols at all three sites, Ferrer said.
In the Central Valley, hundreds of workers have been infected at Ruiz Foods, a frozen food packer in Tulare County, and Central Valley Meat Co., a meat packaging facility in Kings County.
In Ventura County, hundreds of farm workers have tested positive, driven in part by an outbreak in a housing complex that provides farm employers with temporary housing for their workers.
Outbreaks have also been a problem in other agricultural areas of California: the Imperial Valley east of San Diego, the Coachella Valley of Riverside County, the Salinas Valley, and the wine country of Sonoma, Napa, Solano counties , Mendocino and Lake of Northern California.
Times writer Priscella Vega contributed to this report.
