For six weeks, not a day went by without at least 5,000 patients around California hospitalized with COVID-19. The active hospitalization count climbed higher than 7,100 in mid-July. On Sunday, the streak was broken.
The 4,975 patients hospitalized Sunday, the most recent day for which data was available, were the fewest since June 28 — also the last time the number of active hospitalizations across the state was below 5,000, according to data compiled by this news organization.
The decline has been driven in large part by Los Angeles County, the most-populous in the nation and also one of the earliest and hardest-hit by the virus, while the Bay Area, which has largely avoid the worst of the virus, has seen a slight uptick in the past week.
Both regions, as well as the state, reported record levels of hospitalizations during the third week of July. Since then, LA has shed nearly 900 patients to lower its count to 1,352 on Sunday — a 40% decrease. The Bay Area, meanwhile, had cut its hospitalizations by nearly 20% from their peak, but rather than continue that decline, the region has added a net of 50 patients in the past eight days.
Driven largely by increases in San Francisco, Alameda and San Mateo counties, the number of hospitalizations in the Bay Area rose to 720 on Sunday, a 7.5% increase since its recent low eight days ago. In fact, according to this news organization’s tracking, some Bay Area counties have exceeded the state threshold of a 10% increase in hospitalizations over three days, though everywhere in the region is already on the state’s monitoring list due to their elevated case rates.
At their respective peaks, the per-capita rate of hospitalizations in the Bay Area was less than half that in Los Angeles County. But on Sunday, the spread had closed to a rate of 13.5 active hospitalizations per 100,000 population in LA and 9 per 100,000 in the Bay Area, compared to respective rates of 22.3 per 100,000 in LA and 10.3 per 100,000 in the Bay Area about a month ago.
The San Joaquin Valley, too, has seen a recent sharp reduction in hospitalizations. With a population a little over half that of the Bay Area, it still has more COVID-19 patients in hospital beds. But the region had reduced its count by about 33% from its peak on Aug. 2, down to 884 on Sunday — a per-capita rate of 20.6 per 100,000.
For the past month, the eight-county San Joaquin Valley, which encompasses the southern half of the Central Valley, became the new epicenter of the virus in California, where cases, deaths and hospitalizations were rising fastest per-capita.
That remains the case — all eight counties reported the eight highest per-capita case rates of the past week — though the rates have fallen slightly from their Friday peaks. On Monday, there had been about 342 cases and 4.5 deaths per 100,000 in the region in the past week, compared to respective rates of about 127 cases and 2.8 deaths in LA and 118 cases and 0.75 deaths per 100,000 in the Bay Area.
Just north of the San Joaquin Valley, Sacramento County also reported a record number of deaths Monday — 19, the same as LA and the second-most in the state, behind Riverside County, which reported 31 fatalities Monday, though neither county issues updates over the weekend.
Sonoma led all Bay Area counties with three fatalities from COVID-19 on Monday, followed by one each in Marin and Napa counties.
In total, the 98 deaths reported statewide Monday kept the seven-day average around 124 fatalities per day, the lowest it has been in the month of August. The 9,315 new cases were far off the daily record set last Monday, when the state began backfilling about 300,000 unreported tests, which meant the seven-day average dropped to about 8,600 new cases per day.
Nationwide, the death toll crossed 170,000 on Sunday, and Americans continued to die from the virus at a rate of about 1,000 per day. Meanwhile, new cases were coming in at a rate of 50,000 per day, and the cumulative case count neared 5.5 million.
