There were signs of starting the week that the coronavirus crisis had begun to drift away from California’s largest and most affected county, even if deaths have yet to decrease.
On Monday, another 94 deaths attributed to COVID-19 were reported in California, bringing that seven-day average to a new high of 112 deaths per day over the past week, according to data compiled by this news organization. The 10,668 new cases were slightly less than last Monday, which kept the seven-day average deadlock at around 9,265 positive tests per day over the past week, where it has been for nearly three weeks.
In Los Angeles County, the number of new cases each day has been trending downward for two weeks as the seven-day average there reached its lowest level since July 6 (2,426 cases per day). With 2,033 new cases on Monday, it has now recorded many or fewer in four of the past five days, a feat that had accomplished just one more day since the July 4 holiday weekend. It has represented 31% of the state’s total cases in the last two weeks, below 50% and closer to its proportion of the population (around 25%).
Monday was also the rare day that the country’s largest county, home to some 10 million people, did not report the highest number of deaths in the state. That unenviable distinction belonged to Riverside County, which reported 1,720 new cases and 34 deaths in its first update since Friday. No other county reported more than 10, although the six in Sacramento County were second in a single day and ranked fourth in the state, while Tuolumne County, which has reported only 131 total cases to date, recorded his first two deaths from The Pandemic.
Governor Gavin Newsom stood in one of California’s new hot spots on Monday when he announced a round of relief funds for the Central Valley, parts of which have supplanted southern California as the worst vectors of the virus in the state.
Fresno, San Joaquin, Kern, Tulare and Stanislaus counties reported more new cases Monday than any jurisdiction in the Bay Area, despite a fraction of the population. All five were among the state’s top 13 growing cases on Monday, despite Fresno (tenth) and Kern (eleventh) ranking that high population among the state’s 58 counties.
In the agricultural watershed between San Joaquin and Kern counties, the average per capita for new cases had reached 52.6 per 100,000 residents per day on Monday, a growth rate twice as high as what Harvard scientists classify as “red” or the highest risk level for spread. In Los Angeles County, that rate reached 36.9 per 100,000 at its peak and had dropped to 24.3 in the subsequent 15 days. The Bay Area’s per capita case rate on Monday was 12.1 per 100,000 residents per day, averaged over the past week.
Those counties have also seen their hospitalizations per capita rise more than their peak so far in Los Angeles, which peaked on July 18, but has since fallen about 8%. In those Central Valley counties, there were 30.2 patients currently hospitalized on Sunday for every 100,000 residents, compared to 20.5 per 100,000 in Los Angeles and 9.7 per 100,000 in the Bay Area.
In Tulare and Stanislaus counties, the test’s positivity rate had soared to 17.7%, while it was as high as 10.7% in Fresno, Newsom said Monday. Both were significantly higher than the state as a whole, which has seen its seven-day rate plateau between 7% and 8% since the second week of July.
“The time is now … to get an idea of what is happening in the Central Valley,” said Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state’s chief health official, who joined Newsom in Stockton.
In the Bay Area, the average number of new cases per day was within two percentage points of where it was a week ago, although it remained three times higher than it was five weeks ago (969 per day versus 295 on June 20) , before the recent peak in cases. Santa Clara County reported the majority of new cases in the region on Monday (174), followed by Solano (154), which also reported the only fatality in the Bay Area: Contra Costa (140), San Mateo ( 102) and San Francisco (90). )
Hospitalizations in the Bay Area have slightly outstripped the state in the past two weeks, although both have leveled off due to rapid increases seen earlier in the month.
The number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in the Bay Area (773 on Sunday) had grown approximately 10% in the past week and 28% in the past two weeks, with the largest increases in Santa Clara counties. and Contra Costa. Statewide, the 6,935 patients on Sunday were within a percentage point of this time last week and about 7% more than two weeks ago.
The total number of cases in the Bay Area crossed 50,000 on Monday, just over 10% of the state’s count, which reached 463,327, according to data compiled by this news organization. The 765 victims of the virus in the region represent less than 9% of the number of deaths in the entire state, despite the fact that the Bay Area represents 20% of the 39.5 million people in the state.
The death toll from the virus in California reached 8,544 on Monday and rose faster than at any other point in the pandemic. The average 112 per day for the past week is double the death rate a month ago, when about 63 Californians died from the virus each day.
Monday’s new deaths pushed California beyond Massachusetts into the morbid ranking; Only New York and New Jersey have reported more deaths from the virus. Although, on a per capita basis, California does not rank in the top 25 in deaths or in the top 20 in cases.
The United States has continued to add about 65,000 new cases per day for two weeks. The country’s case count reached 4.3 million on Monday, while the death toll was close to 150,000, both numbers higher than any other country in the world.
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