As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on in California, the the southern half of the state on Thursday continued to report record numbers of fatalities, while closer to home, Santa Clara County became the first in the Bay Area to record 1,000 lives lost to the virus.
Altogether, counties around the state combined for their third-largest death toll on any single day of the pandemic, with 631 on Thursday, according to data compiled by this news organization, increasing the cumulative total to 32,288, including a record 3,732 just in the past week — an average of more than 530 per day. With Thursday’s tally, California has now recorded its nine deadliest days of the pandemic since New Year’s Eve. The only two days with a higher death toll than Thursday came this past Tuesday and the Friday before that.
Cases continued to come at a stubbornly high rate, with 40,602 reported Thursday, but the pace of growth has slowed since their peak prior to Christmas, and the positivity rate fell to its lowest point since the new year, 12.6%, but was still higher than any other time prior to December. Hospitals around the state are also still overrun with coronavirus patients, but for the first time in months, the active count is decreasing on a daily basis. In the past 24 hours, California has reduced its hospitalizations by more than 370 to 21,282, only about 3% fewer than a week ago, but the modest decline represents the first signs of hope in months for a strained medical system.
In Northern California and Greater Sacramento — the two regions not under a stay-at-home order because of sturdy capacity in their intensive care units — infections have also leveled off. But Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley have kept the statewide infection rate among the highest in the nation, and in the Bay Area, cases have now soared past their pre-Christmas peak.
A disproportionately high number of deaths throughout the pandemic have come in Southern California, but only more so in recent weeks. Almost three in every four fatalities in the past week have occurred in the region, despite it accounting for just over half the state’s population.
On Thursday, Los Angeles County led the state again with 279 fatalities, pushing its cumulative total over 13,000, and it was followed by 92 in nearby Riverside County, its second-highest tally of the pandemic. Elsewhere in the region, San Diego County reported 53 deaths, the fourth-most in the state, Orange County added 16, and Ventura County added 13, also among the top 10 in the state Thursday. Throughout the region, deaths have increased by 75% in the past two weeks, when the region was already averaging more than anywhere else in the state
The average daily death toll in the Bay Area has doubled in the past two weeks, but on a per-capita basis, it remains well below the rates elsewhere in the state. Over the course of the pandemic, about one in every 1,200 Californians has died from COVID-19, but in the Bay Area that rate is almost half that, approximately one in every 2,400.
In Santa Clara County, where almost a year ago the first known American death from COVID-19 occurred last February, the death toll grew to 1,028, becoming the first in the Bay Area to surpass the morbid milestone of a thousand coronavirus casualties. Contra Costa County recorded 15 fatalities to push its death toll over 400, behind only Santa Clara and Alameda County, where the death toll grew to 768.
In the past week, about 5 in every 100,000 Bay Area residents died, but in Southern California, the rate was over 11 per 100,000. Statewide, approximately 9.5 in every 100,000 Californians perished in the past week, the 10th-highest per-capita rate in the nation, and an average of 110 in every 100,000 contracted the virus each day, a higher rate than every state but Arizona.
In the Bay Area, there was an average of nearly 5,500 cases per day over the past week — or a per-capita rate of about 64/100K — higher than any previous point of the pandemic and an 18% increase since the new year began. The only other regions in the state with commensurate rises in cases were the San Joaquin Valley, where infections have risen 23% since the new year, and Southern California, which has seen a 21% increase. Both regions began the year with substantially higher infection rates, however, and still report between two-thirds and twice as many cases per-capita as the Bay Area. The two northernmost regions in the state, however, have either reported no increase or even a decrease in cases in the two weeks since the new year and substantially lower infection rates than elsewhere in California. Nowhere but the Bay Area have infections increased past their peak prior to Christmas.
Nationally, an average of 240,000 Americans are still contracting the virus each day, near its highest level of the pandemic, and it is killing an average of more than 3,300 Americans every day, including a record 4,400 on Tuesday, according to data collected by the New York Times. The country’s cumulative death toll is nearing 400,000 and could reach the morbid milestone early next week.
