Despite a recent uptick in deaths, California’s other metrics in its battle with COVID-19 continued to improve Wednesday.
Counties around the state reported another 3,472 cases of the virus, according to data compiled by this news organization — close to the daily average for the past week, which has fallen about 30% in the past two weeks and more than 60% from its peak.
The number of patients hospitalized around the state also continued to shrink to 2,821 on Tuesday, a 25% decline in the past two weeks and fewest active patients since April 7. The 875 patients in intensive care units was 27% fewer than two weeks ago, with only one date on record with fewer patients (April 1, the first day the state began tracking hospitalizations).
On Tuesday, the seven-day positivity rate hit its lowest point on record — 3.3% — before climbing back to 3.6% on Wednesday, which is still lower than any point documented before this week. The state only began to test at its current rate — more than 100,000 per day, on average — around the start of July. Through May, it was conducting fewer than 50,000 tests per day, likely not enough to accurately capture the scope of the virus, experts said.
Although the 111 deaths reported around the state Wednesday drove down the seven-day average to about 105 per day, it has reported about 10.5% more fatalities in the past seven days than the previous week.
The Bay Area has nearly doubled its average daily death toll in the past week. It reached its highest point of the pandemic Wednesday, eclipsing a record set the previous day, with an average of nearly 19 deaths per day, or a total of 132, over the past week.
Many of those can be explained by Alameda County backfilling previously unaccounted for deaths, which has increased the county’s death toll by 99 since the start of September. On Wednesday, however, it didn’t account for any of the 15 new fatalities in the region.
Santa Clara County, which is second to Alameda in overall death toll, reported six new deaths Wednesday, followed by five in Marin County, three in Contra Costa County and one in Santa Cruz County — just the eighth fatality in the coastal county. Only 18 counties have reported fewer fatalities to date than Santa Cruz, all of which have considerably smaller populations.
Los Angeles County reported 30 deaths Wednesday, the largest share of the 111 statewide, followed by 11 in Riverside County and seven each in San Joaquin and Kern counties. The average daily deaths was about even to what it was two weeks ago in LA, Riverside and Kern counties, while it had fallen by more than half in that time in San Joaquin County.
California’s overall death toll stood at 14,723, behind only New York, New Jersey and Texas, while its 771,902 total cases were the most of all 50 states. Per-capita, however, California reported fewer cases in the past week than all but 15 states, and is in the middle of the pack in overall cases and deaths.
While the U.S. still has the highest number of total cases and deaths in the developed world, there are signs its outbreak is receding while other countries experience first or second waves of the virus.
According to the New York Times, France and Spain are both reporting higher numbers of cases per-capita, as is much of South America, while India, with its massive population, has begun to report more overall cases.
As of Wednesday, there were at least 29.9 million cases and 940,000 deaths worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University, including 6.6 million cases and more than 196,000 deaths in the U.S.
