California reported another large number of new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, according to data compiled by this news organization. So why did its daily average sink?
Last Thursday, Los Angeles County dumped a batch of backlogged tests, resulting in an anomaly of more than 6,300 statewide cases reported that day. Now, that outlier has been replaced in the seven-day average calculation by the 4,329 reported this Thursday, or about 32% fewer cases; however, it was about 43% more than the previous Thursday without any backlogged results, two weeks ago.
Likewise, while the daily average dropped about 6% in the past 24 hours, to about 4,325 cases per day, it was still about 33% higher than two weeks ago. However, while cases are on the rise statewide, the daily death toll continues to shrink.
In the past week, there were 305 fatalities reported around California, or an average of about 44 per day, the fewest in a week since April 9. On Thursday, there were 30 reported around the state, with no more than four in any county. There were four total reported Thursday in the nation’s largest county, Los Angeles, where the 88 reported fatalities in the past week were the fewest since the very first week pandemic data began to be tracked: March 29-April 4.
It had been two and half months since Los Angeles County reported as many new positive tests for COVID-19 — with no backlog — as the more than 1,700 there Thursday, according to data compiled by this news organization, rising alarm in local health officials.
“The high numbers of daily cases are very concerning because, as we have seen in the past, increases in cases lead to increases in hospitalizations and deaths,” Dr. Barbara Ferrer, the county’s public health director, said in a statement.
Last week, LA County reported a significant number of backlogged test results, leading to a spike in the seven-day average. But a week later, the county is still averaging about 46% more cases per day than it was two weeks ago.
In the Bay Area, there were about 33% more cases reported this Thursday than the previous one, which resulted in about a 3.5% bump in the daily average from the previous day. At about 554 per day, the region is averaging about 23.5% more cases now than it was two weeks ago.
About 110 people for every 100,000 residents were infected in Los Angeles County in the past week, compared to per-capita rates of about 48.5 in the Bay Area, 76.6 across all of California and 166.1 nationally.
Overall, cases and hospitalizations are on the rise as October comes to a close. But in review, California is on pace to close out the month with a similar number of cases as September — when there were the fewest of any month since May — and potentially the lowest monthly death toll since March.
With two days left to go, there have been 1,672 deaths and 104,729 cases reported in California in October, according to data compiled by this news organization. That puts its on pace for about 38% fewer deaths than there were reported in September and about 6.5% fewer than the lowest previous monthly death toll, when there were 1,917 reported in April.
And while at no point in October has more than 60 of every 1 million Californians been hospitalized with COVID-19 — its longest stretch with the least strain on its medical system — the number of patients hospitalized Wednesday, in the latest data available from the California Department of Public Health, was the highest it has been in the month of October — 2,358, a 5% increase from two weeks ago and the most actively receiving care since Sept. 30.
Nationally, according to the COVID Tracking Project, about 140 of every 1 million Americans was hospitalized with COVID-19, or about one in every 7,120.
The U.S. this week reported 500,000 new cases of the virus for the first time, according to the COVID Tracking Project. In the past two weeks, 25 states have reported record numbers of cases, and since Oct. 1, 47 of 50 states have seen cases rise faster than reported tests, researchers at the COVID Tracking Project wrote in their weekly report.
“The third surge is in full swing, hospitalizations are rising nationwide, and deaths have begun to increase in Wisconsin, the state that could be seen as the canary in the coal mine of this surge,” they wrote, in part.
On Thursday, the U.S. set yet another daily record for new cases, eclipsing 90,000 for the first time, according to data collected by the New York Times. The daily average also reached a new high: 77,865 cases per day over the past week — 17% higher than the previous peak this summer.
In total, more than 9 million Americans have now been infected with COVID-19 and more than 228,000 have died from it, according to the Times’ data. In the most impacted states — North and South Dakota – between one in every 18 and 20 people have caught the virus.
