Coronavirus transmission rates in California are falling, a hopeful signal amid a summer wave driven by the Delta variant, according to new data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The state’s level of coronavirus transmission has dropped from “high” to “substantial,” the second highest level, as defined by the CDC.
On Tuesday night, California is the only state to fall into that category, as is Puerto Rico. The CDC scale that assesses coronavirus transmission levels classifies states into one of four levels: the worst (high) is color-coded as red; followed by substantial (orange), moderate (yellow) and low (blue).
California is “the only major state that is improving the transmission levels of the COVID-19 community from red to orange,” said state epidemiologist Dra. Erica Pan. tweet Monday night. He credited relatively high vaccination rates, as well as indoor masking practices, to help reduce new coronavirus infections.
There are orders for masks in the counties where most Californians live, but there is no statewide order that requires the use of indoor masks in public settings.
California entered the second highest level of coronavirus transmission Monday night, a level it shared with just two more states, Connecticut and Vermont, in addition to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. On Tuesday night, Connecticut, Vermont and the District of Columbia had fallen back to the worst level.
It was not immediately known whether delays in data processing were a factor in California’s lowest community transmission rate. Los Angeles County did not report any cases Saturday or Sunday due to a planned system upgrade.
As a result, it is likely to take a couple of days to determine if the change in the state of California is the result of a data error or represents a real change in conditions. The CDC updates its level assignments for each state each evening from Monday to Saturday.
However, the trend of new weekly cases of coronavirus targeting over the past weekend suggests a marked decline in recent weeks, which could lead to eventual relief in areas such as the Central Valley and Northern California, where many hospitals still are overwhelmed by patients with COVID-19.
On Friday night, California saw a 27% drop in weekly cases over the past two weeks, from an average of 13,400 cases a day over the seven-day period that ended Aug. 27 to about 9,800 cases a day during the week that ended. Friday, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of data provided by the state Department of Public Health.
During the same period, the San Francisco Bay Area saw a 36% drop in weekly cases; Southern California, 28%; the Great Sacramento area, 27%; the San Joaquin Valley, 18%; and Northern California, 15%.
The nation at large is also watching new weekly cases of coronavirus begin to fall. Approximately 118,000 new coronavirus cases a day were reported in the United States during the seven-day period ending Sunday; the previous week’s average was about 152,000 cases a day.
However, hospitals continue to be stressed in some areas of California, especially in areas such as Northern California and the Central Valley. The regions present the worst hospitalization rates in the state for COVID-19: for every 100,000 residents, the San Joaquin Valley has 37 people in the hospital with COVID-19; in rural Northern California, there are 30; and in the Greater Sacramento area, there are 27, according to the Times analysis.
By contrast, the rate in Southern California is 15 and the bay area is 10.
Some experts say that when COVID-19 hospitalizations exceed five hospitalizations per 100,000 residents, it may be prudent to take COVID-19 emergency measures, such as interior mask orders.
The San Joaquin Valley has reported the least relief in COVID-19 hospitalizations in the past two weeks. COVID-19 hospitalizations fell only 2% in the San Joaquin Valley, 13% in the Greater Sacramento area, and 14% in rural Northern California.
In contrast, these hospitalizations fell 24% in Southern California and the Bay Area during the same time period.
In the most populous county in the San Joaquin Valley, Fresno County, officials warned last week that they were so overwhelmed that hospitals were on the precipice of being forced to ration health care to patients.
The San Joaquin Valley, home to more than 4 million people, more populated than 24 other states, has faced an extreme shortage of available intensive care staff beds, so much so that some critical patients have had to be relocated to more than 100 miles away.
ICU regional availability in the San Joaquin Valley has been less than 10% for 13 consecutive days and state officials have ordered that overvoltage protocols stipulated by general acute care hospitals must accept transferred patients if ‘ls indicates, as long as they have space and that it is considered “clinically appropriate” to do so.
In Del Norte County, in the far north of California, more than half of patients hospitalized at Crescent City Main Hospital have COVID-19. In contrast, in Los Angeles County, only 11% of hospitalized patients have COVID-19, according to The Times ’COVID-19 hospital tracker.
Nationally, new COVID-19 hospital daily admissions have fallen. During the seven-day period that ended Saturday, the nation was recording about 11,100 new COVID-19 hospital admissions per day, a 8% reduction from the previous week, according to the CDC.
However, daily deaths from COVID-19 continue to increase. California reported 116 deaths from COVID-19 a day during the seven-day period that ended Friday.
That was up nearly 50% from the week ended Aug. 27, when California recorded about 79 deaths a day.
The latest daily death toll is still significantly lower than during the winter hike, during which most Californians were not fully vaccinated. At its height, California recorded about 550 deaths from COVID-19 a day.
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.