COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continued to fall Thursday in California, and state models are increasingly bullish in their outlook for the pandemic.
With 5,525 new cases reported Thursday, according to data collected by this news organization, the California average over the past week fell to its lowest point since the first week of November, while the number of Californians hospitalized with COVID-19 fell below 6,000 times before Thanksgiving.
Cases in California have dropped 87% from last month’s high and have dropped more than half in the past two weeks. Hospitalizations have fallen 73% from last month’s high and 43% in the past two weeks, to an active total of 5,934, as of Wednesday, according to state data.
Right now, next month, according to state models, there would be fewer Californians hospitalized than ever before on pandemic records, which go back to the last days of last March. On March 24, active hospitalizations will have fallen below 2,000, according to state models, and in a week’s time, the total is expected to fall to about 1,000.
For nearly 11 months, a minimum of 2,000 Californians have been hospitalized for COVID-19. The only period of the pandemic recorded in California with less than 2,000 active hospitalizations occurred during the first four days of registration, from March 29 to April 1 last year.
To reach the expected total next month, California hospitalizations would have to drop another 82%.
As transmission decreases, hospitalizations have followed.
When California released its updated modeling tool in the second week of December, the reproductive rate of the virus in the state was 1.2, meaning that a single infected person would spread the virus to an average of more than another person, a formula for exponential growth. .
Now, the statewide “R-effective” rate has dropped to 0.69 and the difference is likely to decrease, that is, a rate of 0.9 or less, in all counties except seven, according to the models state. In the Bay Area, reproductive rates range from 0.83 in Marin County to 0.64 in Alameda County.
As a region, the state has slightly outperformed the improvement in the bay area. Cases in the region have fallen by about 83% from last month’s high and 47% in the past two weeks. Southern California averages one-tenth of cases since last month’s high, including a 55 percent drop in the past two weeks.
With a maximum infection rate last month more than double that of the Bay Area per capita, the 13.8 daily cases in Southern California per 100,000 residents over the past week remain above 10, 5 per 100,000 of the bay area, despite a more drastic decline.
Southern California is still feeling the effects of the state’s largest and most sustained outbreak, which once again accounts for the majority of fatalities reported Thursday, though less than the region’s oversized share in total deaths.
On Thursday, the death toll in California rose to 51,384, with 394 fatalities.
Los Angeles County reported 115 new deaths, followed by 42 in Riverside County, 41 in Orange County and 30 in San Diego County.
In all, Southern California on Thursday accounted for about 65 percent of the state’s fatalities and has been responsible for nearly three out of four deaths since the start of the pandemic, though it accounted for a little over below 60% of the state’s population.
In the bay area, 51 deaths were reported among its locals, led by 19 in Contra Costa and 18 in Santa Clara counties. Alameda County also added six deaths and San Francisco reported four. Throughout the pandemic, the region has accounted for approximately one in nine fatalities, while it has been home to approximately one in five Californians.
Deaths everywhere come in smaller numbers than last month. Within a month, the death toll in California is expected to have risen by less than 4,000, according to state models, to rise to about 55,000 by March 20.