Earlier this week, California again became the most coveted-affected state in the nation, reclaiming the infamous title from Texas. With the number of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and coronavirus-related ICU patients in the state on the rise in recent weeks, health officials on board have warned that the numbers are important because, statistically, they all lead to one thing: an increase in deaths during the epidemic period. On Thursday, those warnings became an undeniable fact as California witnessed the highest number of COVID-related deaths ever. That means the country on Wednesday experienced the highest daily number of corona virus deaths, at 3,124. In recent months, California has been able to prevent jumps in lawsuits, before causing more deaths than the worst record of 219 lives lost on July 31st. But the dam seems to have been broken by a tsunami-like upsurge of new cases every day. Related Story FDA panel recommends approval of Pfizer’s Govt-19 vaccine By mid-July, the number of daily cases leading to that awful death toll had reached 13,000. Now, at the beginning of December, the number of new cases per day has doubled to 29,677. With the deaths about four weeks behind, it is clear that Thursday is the beginning of a record 220 deaths. In fact, four weeks ago, the number of cases was about 8,000. What this means is that while deaths are high all the time, they are likely to be the highest in the next few weeks. To what extent, this is not clear, but for many months Los Angeles County Director of Health and Human Services Dr. Christina Galle has devised the following equation, which has proven to be reliable: Galle has about 12% of all corona virus cases ending in hospital. “Half of them end up in the ICU,” he said in November. “Two-thirds of them are on the ventilator. Half of them will die based on previous experience. “Doing the math, that means 3,561 of the 29,677 epidemics reported Thursday would end up in a hospital. Of those, 1,780 will require ICU maintenance. Of those ICU patients, 1,175 will require a ventilator. That means 587 people will die as a result of new numbers in a single day on Thursday. So in early January, California could see more than 500 residents die from the virus every day. Even a week of such numbers would have lost 3,500-4,000 Californians. Assumes that the number of ICUs is not high in January, which is not given if it sees 1,700 new ICU patients every day. Governor Gavin Newsom said the system had 7,662 ICU beds in mid-November. Now there are a few more. Two days of 1,700 new ICU patients would overwhelm the system, with only 9.9% found in its beds late Wednesday. It does not take into account all the other drawbacks that create the need for ICU maintenance in the winter. The state can raise some new units and move patients, but this is greatly limited by properly trained medical individuals. Newsom announced the arrival of more than 800 specially trained staff this week, but the government is unlikely to see much of the need across the country and raise such expertise in a few more weeks. What’s more, California is currently seeing a slump in the number of health workers, which further restricts the number of ICU beds. ICUs in some districts, like three in the San Joaquin Valley, have already exceeded capacity. The above calculations do not take into account any significant impact of Newsom’s current regional shelter order. But in the last few days the state has already seen numbers of 30,000 or so and the state’s test positive rate is rising. That data indicates that case numbers will rise even more in the near term. Therefore, the daily death toll is close to 600, which is locked in early January. Questions remaining: How big will the rise from the meetings over the December holidays be above the current Thanksgiving rise; How difficult it will be to impact the flu season that has already emphasized rigorous care facilities; Also, if the state ICU system is overwhelmed, how many more Californians will die as a result?