All of the Bay Area – and the majority of California — has now entered the second of four phases in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to reopen the state. Curbside retail, manufacturing plants and offices will be allowed to resume operations around the state in all but Los Angeles and Sacramento counties.
But the number of new cases of COVID-19 continues to come in the thousands, with days of triple-digit fatalities. The most recent of which came three days ago, with 107 deaths reported Friday amounting to the state’s second-deadliest day of the outbreak.
[ FAQ: What does it mean to enter ‘Phase 2’? Which parts of the state qualify? ]
Another 84 Californians succumbed to the virus over the weekend, including 33 on Sunday to bring the death toll to 3,240, according to data compiled by this news organization, while the state crossed 80,000 total confirmed cases with another 1,433 positive tests reported Sunday.
The state’s pace of growth remained exactly the same as the week prior: 18% more cases and 17% more fatalities.
Los Angeles County continues to account for a large chunk of the growth statewide, but more than half of the new cases Sunday came in counties moving forward with reopening. Of the 84 deaths over the weekend, 66 occurred in LA County, while the other 18 came in counties that have entered Phase 2.
The Bay Area, while still outpaced by Southern California, has seen an increase in new cases the past three days. The 10-county region added another 349 confirmed cases over the weekend, or just over 10% of the statewide gain — still below its proportion of the population but slightly higher than in past days.
Alameda led the growth with 92 new cases from Friday to Sunday, followed by San Francisco (65), Santa Clara (50), Contra Costa (46) and San Mateo (27). In Southern California, the largest increases have come in Los Angeles (1,715), San Diego (313), Orange (251) and San Bernardino (200).
A number of mostly rural Northern California counties have been approved to accelerate the reopening of restaurants and shopping malls, too, in an advanced stage of Phase 2. But to qualify for that, counties cannot have recorded a fatality from the virus in the past 14 days, in addition to a number of other criteria.
One death in Alameda County was the region’s lone fatality over the weekend, and hospitalization rates continue to decrease. The number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized across the Bay Area dropped to 252 on Friday, the most recent day for which data was available, the lowest it has been since April 1.
Statewide, hospitalizations hit one-month low on Sunday, with 3,037 patients in hospital beds, the lowest number since April 13. That number has fallen 11.3% since the beginning of the month, while the number of patients in ICUs has dropped by 8.7%.
As new cases and deaths plateau and hospitalizations decrease slightly, the state has ramped up testing — but not yet to the goals Newsom set last month. Labs around the state performed 200,000 tests last week, about 12,000 more than the week before and 75,000 more than three weeks ago. But that still only amounts to 7 of every 10,000 Californians being tested each day.
Newsom had set a goal of 25,000 tests per day by the end of April, which the state accomplished, but also an eventual capacity of 60,000 to 80,000 per day. Entering the third week of May — and the eighth week since the Bay Area’s shelter-in-place mandate — the state has yet to conduct more than 36,000 tests in a single day.
