California on Tuesday surpassed COVID-19 deaths in New York, regaining the ignominious title 11 months after the first American to die of coronavirus was discovered in Golden State.
According to data collected by this news organization, the death toll in California rose another 513 on Tuesday, to 44,996 since the start of the pandemic nearly a year ago. While the devastating wave of New York last spring has not recurred anywhere else in the country, California, a state with twice the population of New York and 10 million more people than any other state, has recorded the deadliest pandemic period in the past two months, reporting deaths at three times the New York pace last week.
However, even deaths, considered the latest indicator of a delay in an outbreak, have begun to affect the recession, now, about a month from the first signs of cases and declining hospitalizations. The California curve has followed a similar trajectory to that of the country, which has also begun to see a decline in the number of new cases and deaths, as well as active hospitalizations.
In California, the average number of new cases continued to fall on Tuesday, after 10,913 cases were reported statewide. At about 12,320 daily over the past week, California has reduced its cases by almost half compared to two weeks ago, down 47%, but infections continue to reach a higher rate than at any point before the winter wave. The number of Californians hospitalized with COVID-19 has dropped 35% in the past two weeks to 11,198, starting Monday, its lowest point in more than two months, but still well above any point before the ‘Thanksgiving.
But the death toll in California has risen more than 3,100 last week, an average of 445 a day, nearly 20 percent less than two weeks ago, but still tripling any seven-day period outside this winter. Two out of five Californians who died during the entire pandemic have died since the calendar became 2021. Since the start of the new year, California has recorded more than 18,500 deaths from COVID-19, compared to just more than 7,200 in New York, more than 12,000 in Texas, and about 6,500 in Florida, all three states with the following cumulative death rates (and populations).
During April, the deadliest month of the pandemic in New York, it recorded about 21,300 casualties, more than the nearly 15,000 lives lost in California last month, with about half the population.
Per capita, California is below its three major states, including a pandemic mortality rate less than half that of New York, which lags behind neighboring New Jersey in lives lost per capita. .
As cases have fallen rapidly in California, their position in the national classification of infection rates in states has also fallen. Last week, with about 31.2 cases a day per 100,000 population, California went from first to twentieth, according to the New York Times. However, only six other states have a higher proportion of their residents who continue to be treated for the disease in hospitals, according to the COVID monitoring project; none has a higher overall count of active hospitalizations.
In the Bay Area, cases have dropped drastically enough for some local counties to begin to sniff out advanced levels of reopening.
There was no local movement in the weekly update provided on Tuesday, but new state data showed a number of counties that were closed to possibly move to the red reopening level, which requires an adjusted 7 / 100K case rate or lower and a positivity rate of less than 8%.
In San Francisco, the adjusted case rate – a state metric that takes high-capacity testing into account – had dropped to 11.4 / 100K with a positivity rate of 2.7%, the lowest in all counties. of the region as the densely populated counties of the state. Across the Golden Gate, Marin County is not far behind with an adjusted case rate of 15.6 / 100K and a positivity rate of 3.6%. The counties of Alameda, Santa Clara, San Mateo, and Santa Cruz have also adjusted case rates below 20 / 100K, and all counties in the region already meet the red level positivity rate threshold.
Most of Southern California and the southern and western portions of the San Joaquin Valley remained deep within the most restrictive reopening level, with adjusted case rates in almost all counties still three to five times above the level threshold. red.
Southern California continued to account for the highest proportion of deaths in the state, but several counties in the Bay Area also reported double-digit figures on Tuesday. A total of 77 were recorded across the region, including 30 in Santa Clara County, 14 in Contra Costa County, 11 in San Mateo County and 10 in Alameda County.
Southern California counties accounted for the top four fatalities reported Tuesday and 70 percent of the statewide total, led by 225 in Los Angeles County, 37 in Riverside County, 33 in Orange County and 32 in San Diego County.