The state health department is monitoring more counties in California now than not, as the coronavirus crisis continued to spread in almost every corner of the state over the weekend.
On both days of this weekend, California reported more than 6,000 new cases: 6,992 Saturdays and 6,177 Sundays, more than any previous weekend day, bringing the seven-day average to 9,729 cases per day, according to the data. compiled by this news organization. There were 72 deaths reported on Saturday but only 23 on Sunday. However, many counties, including Riverside, Ventura, Fresno, Alameda, and more, do not offer updates on Sundays. Still, due to reporting delays from the last vacation weekend, the seven-day average rose north of 100 deaths per day for the first time in the pandemic. (The tests and deaths last weekend reported that the following Monday is reflected in that average, which inflates it more).
While hospitalizations decreased slightly to 6,322 on Saturday, the most recent day for which data was available, that number is still 77% higher than three weeks ago. The analysis of this news organization showed 18 counties with record hospitalization levels on Saturday and several others that reached new highs last week.
That includes Central Valley counties of Fresno, Kern, Madera, Merced, Sacramento, San Joaquin and Stanislaus, where hospitalizations have tripled in three weeks to 972 among the seven counties. Los Angeles County exceeded its peak in late April this week, reaching 2,093 hospitalized patients on Saturday; Officials have been sounding the alarm about the hospital’s capacity for weeks.
In Sonoma County, where there were four patients hospitalized three weeks ago, there are now 25; in Contra Costa County, the number has increased from 30 three weeks ago to 79 now. Alameda County, which hit the state watch list for the first time on Sunday, peaked at 157 hospitalized patients on July 3, but was still nearly twice as high as three weeks ago on Saturday: 144 to 77.
In the Bay Area, 7.25 out of every 100,000 residents were hospitalized with COVID-19 on Saturday, compared to nearly 18.7 in the Central Valley and 21 in Los Angeles.
A total of 31 counties made it to Governor Gavin Newsom’s watch list on Monday morning, including all Bay Area counties except San Francisco and San Mateo. The counties on the list are determined by metrics such as new cases and per capita and hospitalization rates; Its leaders work with state health officials on solutions to control outbreaks in their area. Counties on the list include those as far north as Glenn and Colusa to Imperial County on the Arizona-Mexico border.
Alameda County has closed outdoor dining while waiting for a state variation, while even indoor dining persists in San Mateo County. San Francisco, which has not appeared on the list, reversed plans to reopen open-air bars, indoor restaurants, and other services such as nail and beauty salons, while Santa Clara County, which reappeared on the list after falling , advanced on Monday with the reopening of salons and gyms. On Sunday night, Sonoma County issued an order to shutdown interior service at restaurants, bars, and wineries.
No Bay Area county has obtained the high-risk red designation from the Harvard Institute of Global Health. But 12 counties in the state have reached the troubling mark of at least 25 cases per 100,000 inhabitants per day in the past week, including the country’s most populous: Los Angeles, with its 10 million residents, has added 32 cases per 100,000 every day. week: higher rate than all states except Arizona, Florida, and Louisiana.
California’s state rate increased to 23.9 cases daily per 100,000, the 10th highest of any state and one of 20 states with an average of at least 10 cases per 100,000 residents per day. There are 13 counties increasing the state rate: Imperial (62.1), Stanislaus (55.8), Orange (34.7), San Bernardino (34.3), San Joaquin (33.8), Tulare (32.2), Los Angeles (32.1), Merced ( 31.5), Fresno (31.1), Riverside (30.7), Madera (28.6), Colusa (28.5) and Kings (24.7). The highest rate in the Bay Area is in Marin County, with a per capita rate of 20.3 cases per day, while the region as a whole averages just under 10 cases per 100,000 residents per day during the past week.
The cumulative case count in the US crossed 3.3 million over the weekend, while the death toll rose to 135,000, according to Johns Hopkins University. In California, the virus has claimed more than 7,000 lives and infected 323,000, including 33,000 cases and 640 deaths in the Bay Area.
